妙法蓮華經玄義 釋名·智妙

Are you seeing the object, or only your own imagining? A person whose eyes are closed can still hear others describe colors. He may imagine them in fine detail and even argue fiercely with another person whose eyes are closed, yet imagination is ultimately not genuine seeing. The subtlety of wisdom first asks not how many terms you understand, but whether the film over your eyes has been removed.

Object and wisdom are not two things indifferent to one another. Only when a form appears does its shadow follow; only when a sound arises does its echo respond. Two mirrors facing one another each appear within the other. The earth brings forth a sprout, as an object brings forth wisdom; the sprout in turn brings forth earth, as wisdom illuminates its object. The object gives wisdom something to illuminate, and wisdom makes the object manifest clearly. If mind illuminates only its own preconceptions, however clever it may be, it remains affective consciousness.

The twenty wisdoms are therefore not a ranking but twenty renewed questions: What object does this wisdom condition? What delusion does it break? Is it only hearing, or direct seeing? Can it only deliver oneself, or can it know sentient beings’ illnesses and medicines? Within the same twelve links of dependent origination, one person sees the cycle of arising and ceasing; another sees illusory non-arising; another sees immeasurable differences; and another sees prajñā, liberation, and the Dharma body precisely within afflictions, karma, and suffering. The object has not changed, but the way of seeing has, and the world is no longer the same.

Coarse and wondrous are therefore not the permanent identities of two kinds of people. Coarse marks the limit while the eye has not yet opened and the object has not yet interfused; wondrous means that once skillful means are resolved, they are no longer separated from the real. Opening the coarse to reveal the wondrous does not gouge out the flesh eye and replace it with an unfamiliar pair of eyes. It makes the flesh eye, divine eye, wisdom eye, and Dharma eye all interfuse with the Buddha eye. Each retains its function, yet they are no longer sealed off from one another.

It is like a king visiting a lowly dwelling: the house is not moved, yet through his presence its dignity becomes manifest. It is like the hundred rivers entering the sea: their routes differ, but once they enter, all share the flavor of the sea. Genuine opening does not treat the roads traveled in the past as refuse, nor does it allow any path of skillful means to call itself the destination. It acknowledges depth and shallowness without turning them into separation.

Practice is the same. Warmth is like drilling wood when fire is about to arise. Summit is like standing on a mountain peak where one cannot remain long. Forbearance is like a distant traveler repeatedly exchanging cumbersome possessions for treasure that is easy to carry. The highest worldly Dharma opens the gate of the noble path in the final moment. No step may impersonate arrival, yet no step is futile. What matters is this: Is the present mind multiplying branches, or reducing its objects? Is it imagining through borrowed terms, or allowing contemplation actually to become wisdom?

The heart-essence of the subtlety of wisdom is not to treat wisdom as a beam of light standing outside truth. When the object interfuses, wisdom also interfuses; when the truths no longer obstruct one another, the illuminating mind no longer remains confined to a single frame. You still distinguish every road, every illness, and every medicine, but no longer use those distinctions to pass a final sentence on yourself or sentient beings. Seeing then is not possession of an answer. It is the return of every skillful means to the place where the eye can genuinely open.

1. Why Explain the Subtlety of Wisdom after the Subtlety of Objects?

Second is the subtlety of wisdom. Ultimate principle is hidden, profound, and wondrous and cannot be revealed without wisdom. Wisdom can know the object of knowledge, yet if the object does not interfuse, wisdom cannot become wondrous wisdom. Since the object has already interfused and become wondrous, wisdom accords with it, just as shadow follows form and echo responds to sound. The subtlety of wisdom is therefore explained immediately after the subtlety of objects.

The subtlety of wisdom has two great parts: first, a general discussion of the various wisdoms; second, an explanation of wisdom in relation to various objects. The general discussion again has six gates: first number, second class, third characteristic, fourth illumination, fifth judgment, and sixth opening.

2. The Names and Number of the Twenty Wisdoms

First is the number. There are twenty kinds in all.

First, worldly wisdom.

Second, wisdom of the five calming contemplations and four establishments of mindfulness.

Third, wisdom of the four wholesome roots: warmth, summit, forbearance, and the highest worldly Dharma.

Fourth, wisdom of the first, second, third, and fourth fruits.

Fifth, pratyekabuddha wisdom.

Sixth, wisdom of a bodhisattva cultivating the six perfections.

Seventh, wisdom of a śrāvaka in the Shared Teaching embodying all Dharmas as immediately empty.

Eighth, wisdom of a pratyekabuddha in the Shared Teaching embodying all Dharmas as immediately empty.

Ninth, the skillful wisdom by which a bodhisattva of the Shared Teaching enters the true.

Tenth, the wisdom by which a bodhisattva of the Shared Teaching emerges from emptiness into the provisional and teaches sentient beings.

Eleventh, wisdom of the ten faiths in the Distinct Teaching.

Twelfth, wisdom of the thirty minds—the ten abodes, ten practices, and ten dedications—in the Distinct Teaching.

Thirteenth, wisdom of the ten grounds in the Distinct Teaching.

Fourteenth, Buddha wisdom in the Tripiṭaka Teaching.

Fifteenth, Buddha wisdom in the Shared Teaching.

Sixteenth, Buddha wisdom in the Distinct Teaching.

Seventeenth, wisdom of disciples at the five grades in the Perfect Teaching.

Eighteenth, wisdom at the stage of purification of the six faculties.

Nineteenth, wisdom from the first abode through equal awakening.

Twentieth, wisdom of wondrous awakening.

3. Classifying the Twenty Wisdoms

Next are the classes. Worldly wisdom lacks the world-transcending path. It calculates according to wrong views and falsely grasps, while every movement of mind lies outside right principle. It neither believes nor enters and therefore forms a class of its own.

The five calming contemplations and four establishments of mindfulness have entered the initial worthy stage and carry the atmosphere of Buddha-Dharma, but all still belong to the outer ordinary stage and therefore form one class. The four wholesome roots all belong to the inner ordinary stage and form one class. The four fruits all see the true truth and form one class. A pratyekabuddha can contemplate specific characteristics and erode habitual tendencies and therefore forms a class of its own. A bodhisattva cultivating the six perfections has weaker wisdom regarding principle and stronger wisdom regarding phenomena and therefore forms a class of its own.

The preparatory śrāvaka stage of the Shared Teaching possesses the more excellent wisdom of embodying Dharmas and therefore forms a class of its own. The pratyekabuddha of the Shared Teaching is somewhat more excellent and forms another. The skillful wisdom by which a bodhisattva of the Shared Teaching enters the true studies all four gates and therefore forms its own class. The wisdom of a bodhisattva of the Shared Teaching who emerges into the provisional takes contemplation of conventionality and transforming others as primary and therefore forms its own class.

The ten faiths of the Distinct Teaching already know the Middle Way, surpassing the preceding wisdoms but not reaching the later stages, and therefore form their own class. The thirty minds of the Distinct Teaching all belong to the inner ordinary stage and form one class. The ten grounds all belong to noble wisdom and form one class.

The Buddha of the Tripiṭaka Teaching bears the name “station of teacher” and surpasses disciples of the Three Vehicles and therefore forms a class of its own. The Buddha of the Shared Teaching is superior in severing delusion and illuminating faculties and therefore forms another. The Buddha wisdom of the Distinct Teaching surpasses that of the Shared Teaching and therefore forms its own class.

Disciples at the five grades of the Perfect Teaching still possess the nature of affliction yet can know the Tathāgata’s secret treasury and therefore form their own class. The stage of purification of the six faculties is already near real realization and forms another. The stages from the first abode through equal awakening all break ignorance and form one class. The Buddha wisdom of wondrous awakening is unsurpassed and supremely honored and therefore forms a class of its own. In this way the items are divided or combined according to similarities in nature and judged as twenty classes; the details can be inferred accordingly.

4. Distinguishing the Characteristics of the Wisdoms

Worldly Wisdom

First is the worldly wisdom of India, which at its highest can reach the station of neither perception nor non-perception. The worldly wisdom valued in this land principally includes loyalty and filiality, the five phases, six arts, astronomy, geography, medicine, divination and physiognomy, military methods, commerce, the ability to identify a thousand plants and trees, and knowledge of the names of ten thousand kinds of birds and beasts. Some people can have fragrant paste applied on the left and flesh cut on the right without producing hatred or love. Some attain root dhyāna, produce the five superknowledges, make a river stand within the ear, transform Śakra into a ram, swallow and expel wind and clouds, and stroke the sun and moon with the hand. Yet the Dharmas they know remain worldly, the concentration they attain remains unmoving concentration, and the wisdom they attain still cannot lead beyond the world. Seeking reputation and profit through these things and increasing the delusions of views and craving all belong to what the worldly mind knows; hence it is called worldly wisdom.

The Five Calming Contemplations and Four Establishments of Mindfulness

The five calming contemplations and four establishments of mindfulness possess concentration and are therefore called calming; they possess wisdom and are therefore called contemplation. Contemplation overturns wrong views, and concentration restrains distraction. Counting the breath treats distraction; contemplation of impurity treats desire; what the treatise writes with the graph 滋 treats anger; dependent origination treats delusion; and recollection of the Buddha treats obstruction to the path.

The four establishments of mindfulness are four wisdom-contemplations of body, feeling, mind, and dharmas performed upon the truth of suffering to counteract the four inversions of permanence, pleasure, self, and purity. That the four inversions do not arise comes from these four contemplations. They can initially overturn the four inversions but have not yet entered noble principle and are therefore called wisdom of the outer ordinary stage.

The Dharma of Warmth

The Dharma of warmth conditions the Four Truths and produces wisdom. It first subdues afflictions, after which wisdom gradually grows into sixteen contemplative wisdoms. It resembles drilling wood to obtain fire: the upper and lower pieces depend upon each other, and after fire arises it can burn the fuel. Because wisdom already knows there is an object to be conditioned, it can produce the wisdom of warmth and cause contaminated Dharmas to begin to wither.

It is also like gathering flowers in a heap during summer: the heap itself produces heat, which then causes the flowers themselves to wither. It is also like contemplating the five aggregates in reliance upon the five aggregates, producing the fire of wisdom, and then burning the five aggregates upon which it relies; or like two bamboo stalks rubbing together to produce fire, which then burns the bamboo grove. Venerable Ghoṣa says that among the fire of wisdom seeking liberation, the Dharma of warmth appears first. Just as smoke is the first sign of fire, warmth is the first sign of the uncontaminated fire of wisdom; just as brightness appears before sunrise, it is called warmth.

Faith arises in the right Dharma and Vinaya. Revering and cherishing right Dharma conditions the truth of path; believing and accepting the Vinaya conditions the truth of cessation. Someone asks: The faith at the stage of warmth can originally condition all Four Truths, so why is it said to condition only path and cessation? The answer is that path and cessation are the most excellent and are therefore stated first. Another explanation says that right Dharma embraces suffering, origination, and path, while the Vinaya embraces cessation; all Four Truths are therefore still complete.

The Buddha once told Punarvasu that he had four clauses of Dharma to teach him, asked whether he wished to know them, and invited him to inquire freely. These four clauses are the Four Truths. At this stage, all giving and moral discipline are directed toward liberation; this is its intent. It arises from concentration in the form realm; this is its support. Wholesome roots arising before it within the same level of existence where one abides are its similar cause and condition. The summit Dharma within the four true truths is its functional result. Similar wholesome roots arising subsequently on the same level are its dependent result. The five aggregates of the form realm are its retribution. Definite orientation toward nirvāṇa and not severing wholesome roots are its benefit. The sixteen modes are its practice. It arises from conditions and belongs to wisdom produced by cultivation. It is tied to the form realm’s three samādhis and three faculties, corresponds to many minds according to the explanation given, and can also be lost through retreat.

The grades of warmth, summit, forbearance, and the highest worldly Dharma are divided in several ways. The first explanation divides warmth into lower-lower, lower-middle, and lower-upper; summit into middle-lower, middle-middle, and middle-upper; forbearance into upper-lower and upper-middle; and the highest worldly Dharma into upper-upper alone. If gathered into lower, middle, and upper grades, warmth is lower, summit middle, and forbearance together with the highest worldly Dharma upper.

The second explanation divides warmth into lower-lower and lower-middle; summit into lower-upper, middle-lower, and middle-middle; forbearance into middle-upper, upper-lower, and upper-middle; and the highest worldly Dharma into upper-upper alone. If again gathered into three grades, warmth is lower-lower, summit lower-middle, forbearance middle-upper, and the highest worldly Dharma upper-upper.

Ghoṣa’s division is different again: warmth has the three lower grades; summit has six grades, from lower-lower through middle-upper; forbearance has eight, from lower-lower through upper-middle; and the highest worldly Dharma has only upper-upper. If gathered into three grades, the Dharma of warmth has only the lower grade; the Dharma of summit has lower and middle; forbearance has lower, middle, and upper; and the highest worldly Dharma has only the upper grade.

Warmth has two kinds of relinquishment: it is relinquished when one leaves the realm and level to which it belongs, and it is relinquished through retreat. A person retreating from warmth may fall into hell and commit the five uninterrupted acts but does not sever wholesome roots. The same is true of summit. Forbearance has only relinquishment through leaving the realm and level and does not fall into hell. The remaining details can be inferred accordingly.

The Dharma of Summit

The Dharma of summit is a wholesome root of the form realm. Wholesome roots of the form realm may move or not move, abide or not abide, encounter difficulty or not, be severed or not, retreat or not. On the side extending from movement through retreat, two kinds are distinguished: warmth is lower and summit upper. On the side extending from nonmovement through non-retreat, two kinds are likewise distinguished: forbearance is lower and the highest worldly Dharma upper.

Another explanation says summit should be called lower summit. Why? It is at the summit of the Dharma of warmth and is therefore called summit, yet lies below the Dharma of forbearance and is therefore called lower. Another explanation says summit resembles a road across a mountain peak where a person cannot remain long. If no difficulty occurs, one necessarily crosses the peak and reaches the other side; if difficulty occurs, one retreats. Practitioners do not remain long at summit. Without difficulty they advance to forbearance, and with difficulty they retreat to warmth. Because it resembles a person on a mountaintop, it is called summit.

How is summit contemplated? A small degree of faith arises in the Three Jewels of Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha. It is called small because this Dharma cannot remain long. A small faith in the Buddha conditions the truth of path; a small faith in Dharma conditions the truth of cessation.

Question: It should be able to condition all Four Truths. Why is it said to condition only two?

Answer: Path and cessation are supremely excellent and unsurpassed in purity. They are wondrous, constitute release, and are where faith can most readily arise. To cause those being transformed to produce faithful delight, path and cessation are therefore stated first. If the World-Honored One said suffering and origination should be objects of reverent trust, those being transformed would find this difficult to accept. Affliction, unwholesome conduct, wrong views, and inversion are precisely the sources from which they continually suffer oppression; how could these be worthy of reverence and trust? Those being transformed can delight in path and cessation, so only these two truths are stated.

Another explanation says faith in the Buddha and Saṅgha conditions the truth of path, while faith in Dharma conditions the remaining three truths; together they exhaust all Four Truths.

Question: A person abiding at summit also has faith in the five aggregates, the Three Jewels, and the Four Truths. Why is only faith in the Three Jewels stated?

Answer: The Three Jewels are where people arouse faith and reverence. It is only that the object in which a practitioner’s mind delights differs. Delight arising in relation to the five aggregates is called warmth; delight arising in relation to the Three Jewels is called summit; delight arising in relation to the Four Truths is called forbearance.

Question: Why is retreat from summit specifically mentioned, while retreat from warmth is not?

Answer: Once retreat from summit is stated, it should of course be known that warmth can also retreat. It is simply that at the stage of summit, afflictions and karma come in especially great numbers to obstruct the practitioner. Afflictions and the rest seem to think: “If this person reaches forbearance, in whose body will I later receive my result?” As the practitioner is about to leave the desire realm, they likewise seem to think: “If this person leaves the desire realm, in whose body will I produce my result?” As the practitioner is about to leave the station of neither perception nor non-perception, they again seem to think: “Once this person leaves the defilement of desire belonging to that station and no longer receives a body, in whose body can I still produce my result?” At these three junctures, obstructions are especially numerous.

When practitioners retreat because of obstructions, they become deeply distressed, like someone who sees a treasury with great joy and loses it just as he is about to take the treasure. A person abiding at summit expected soon to reach forbearance, permanently sever the evil paths, attain great benefit, and approach a noble person, yet suddenly retreats and therefore feels exceptional distress. Retreat from summit is specifically mentioned for this reason.

If practitioners can draw near good friends, hear skillful methods that accord with them, contemplate correctly within, believe in the Buddha’s awakening, believe that Dharma is well taught, and believe that the Saṅgha possesses pure merit, this is called faith in the Jewels. Saying form is impermanent through saying consciousness is impermanent is called faith in the aggregates. Knowing suffering, origination, cessation, and path is called faith in the truths. One able to do this abides at summit; one unable to do so retreats from summit.

The Dharmas of Forbearance and the Highest Worldly Dharma

In the contemplation of the Dharma of forbearance, one first correctly contemplates suffering in the desire realm and suffering in the form and formless realms; origination of the formations of the desire realm and origination of formations in the form and formless realms; cessation of formations in the desire realm and cessation of formations in the form and formless realms; the path severing formations of the desire realm and the path severing formations in the form and formless realms. These make thirty-two minds and are called lower forbearance.

The practitioner later reduces the practices and objects contemplated in sequence. Again one correctly contemplates suffering in the desire realm and suffering in the form and formless realms through the path severing formations of the desire realm, removing contemplation of the path severing formations in the form and formless realms; from here one enters middle forbearance. Again one correctly contemplates suffering in the desire realm and suffering in the form and formless realms through cessation of formations in the form and formless realms, removing all contemplation of the truth of path. Again one correctly contemplates suffering in the desire realm and suffering in the form and formless realms through cessation of formations in the desire realm, removing cessation of formations in the form and formless realms. Again one correctly contemplates suffering in the desire realm through origination of formations in the form and formless realms, removing all contemplation of the truth of cessation. Again one correctly contemplates suffering in the desire realm through origination of formations in the desire realm, removing origination of formations in the form and formless realms. Again one correctly contemplates suffering in the desire, form, and formless realms, removing all contemplation of the truth of origination. Finally one correctly contemplates only suffering in the desire realm, removing suffering in the form and formless realms.

At the end one continuously and without interruption or separation correctly contemplates suffering in the desire realm. While contemplating in this way, profound disenchantment arises. One reduces the contemplation again until only two minds contemplate one practice, resembling suffering-Dharma forbearance and suffering-Dharma wisdom. Correct contemplation in this way is called middle forbearance. Using one mind to contemplate only suffering in the desire realm is called upper forbearance.

The highest worldly Dharma then arises. Immediately after the highest worldly Dharma, suffering-Dharma forbearance arises. It is like a person preparing to leave his own country for another. His possessions are too numerous to carry, so he first exchanges his goods for money. Finding even the money inconvenient, he exchanges it for gold. Finding the gold still too plentiful, he exchanges it for a precious object of high value and light weight and carries this to the other country. The practitioner similarly relinquishes and reduces objects step by step in uninterrupted succession and produces upper forbearance. After upper forbearance arises the highest worldly Dharma; after the highest worldly Dharma arises suffering-Dharma forbearance.

Question: Does the highest worldly Dharma have upper, middle, and lower grades?

Answer: In the case of one person alone, it does not have three grades; when many people are compared, it does. Śāriputra is upper, Maudgalyāyana middle, and the rest lower. It can also be divided into three grades in terms of buddhas, pratyekabuddhas, and śrāvakas.

The highest worldly Dharma is the most excellent, excellent, long, honored, upper, and wondrous Dharma among mind and mental factors in relation to other Dharmas. Its being called “first” can be explained through partial superiority or comprehensive superiority.

Partial superiority means that it surpasses worldly Dharmas but does not surpass seeing the truths. Seeing the truths is inseparable from its retinue because the power of wisdom is predominant. Those who perfume dhyāna do not take birth together with ordinary beings. Upon reaching the wisdom of exhaustion, all wholesome roots permanently leave every defiled obstruction. Even the uncontaminated Dharma regarded as inferior among the three samādhis already surpasses the contaminated; how could the highest worldly Dharma be comprehensively superior to everything? If it surpassed only warmth, summit, and forbearance, each of those should also be called first. More precisely, it separately surpasses warmth, summit, and forbearance and every dhyāna, immeasurable state, liberation, and sphere of mastery attained by ordinary beings.

It can also be called comprehensively superior, but this does not mean it is stronger than other Dharmas in every activity. It alone can open the gate of the noble path. Dharmas such as seeing the truths cannot themselves open that gate again. Only because the highest worldly Dharma first opens it can seeing the truths and the other Dharmas become present for cultivation. The capacity to cultivate all of these depends upon the function of the highest worldly Dharma. Its name therefore has several meanings: it is first because it is most excellent; first because it can attain a wondrous result; and first because, like the top of a high banner, nothing stands above it.

Question: Do the preceding explanations differ from one another?

Answer: All praise what is upper and wondrous, but they also make real distinctions. Relative to contemplation of impurity and counting the breath, it is called most excellent; relative to wisdom from hearing, excellent; relative to wisdom from reflection, long; relative to warmth, honored; relative to summit, upper; relative to forbearance, wondrous. They can also be distinguished by the meditative concentration on which they rely: reliance on access concentration is most excellent; on the first dhyāna, excellent; on the intermediate dhyāna, long; on the second dhyāna, honored; on the third dhyāna, upper; on the fourth dhyāna, wondrous. All the preceding explanations follow the Vibhāṣā; those wishing to know them in detail should seek them in that treatise.

From the Four Fruits to Wondrous Awakening

The first fruit has eight forbearances and eight wisdoms. The following three fruits repeatedly examine the true truth through nine unobstructed wisdoms and nine liberating wisdoms. A pratyekabuddha uses both general and specific characteristics. For example, distinguishing suffering and origination in relation to past, present, and future and distinguishing the twelve links of dependent origination are characteristics of specific contemplation.

A bodhisattva cultivating the six perfections has weak wisdom regarding principle and can only subdue delusion without severing it, yet possesses strong wisdom regarding phenomena and can give body, life, and possessions without any regret. A śrāvaka can produce real wisdom and accomplish a noble fruit, yet still calculates, “This is my robe; this is my bowl.” Each has strengths and weaknesses and cannot be judged from only one side.

A śrāvaka of the Shared Teaching embodies conventionality as itself the true through one general-characteristic Dharma gate. A pratyekabuddha of the Shared Teaching can perform both general- and specific-characteristic contemplation within one gate and embody conventionality as itself the true. A bodhisattva of the Shared Teaching can pervasively perform both general- and specific-characteristic contemplation through all four gates, embody conventionality as itself the true, and also emerge pervasively from all four gates into the provisional to teach sentient beings.

The ten faiths of the Distinct Teaching first trust the true mark of suchness at the fruit and arouse the ten minds of faith in seeking that principle. The ten abodes principally cultivate entry into emptiness and concurrently train in the provisional and the Middle. The ten practices principally cultivate the provisional and concurrently train in the Middle. The ten dedications principally cultivate the Middle. At the first ground one directly realizes the Middle Way; from the second ground upward, one repeatedly examines the Middle Way.

The Buddha of the Tripiṭaka Teaching employs thirty-four minds in one period—eight forbearances, eight wisdoms, nine unobstructed states, and nine liberations—and completely severs both the afflictions themselves and their habitual tendencies. While seated at the site of awakening, the Buddha of the Shared Teaching uses wisdom corresponding in one thought to sever the remaining habitual tendencies. The Buddha of the Distinct Teaching uses the mind after vajra to sever the final grade of ignorance and ultimately accomplish buddhahood. Others say that the act of severing itself belongs to equal awakening, while at the Buddha stage nothing remains to be severed and awakening is simply realized in full.

Disciples at the five grades of the Perfect Teaching need not first sever the five desires in order to purify the faculties. Although they possess the nature of affliction, they can know the Tathāgata’s secret treasury. At the stage of purification of the six faculties, they attain wisdom resembling the Middle Way. At the first abode, they attain one Tathāgata body and immeasurable bodies, enter the sea of the Dharma-current, and naturally flow forward. The subsequent stages can be understood accordingly and are not recorded in detail.

5. The Twenty Wisdoms Illuminate the Various Objects

To say that wisdom alone illuminates an object, or that an object alone gives rise to wisdom, falls into fixed attachment to the four alternatives of self-production, production by another, joint production, and production without a cause; a detailed analysis appears elsewhere. When object and wisdom are established through the causes and conditions of the four siddhāntas, both are only names established according to causes and conditions.

Question: Wisdom can illuminate an object. Can the object also illuminate wisdom?

Answer: According to the inconceivable explanation, object and wisdom illuminate one another without doctrinal obstruction. The Renwang Prajñā says that wisdom and the place reached by wisdom are both called prajñā. This resembles two mirrors facing one another and illuminating each other. It also resembles one great earth producing various sprouts, while the growth of the sprouts in turn brings the earth to completion. Setting this level aside for the moment, the ten-suchness objects illuminated by the twenty wisdoms can first be listed.

Worldly wisdom illuminates the ten suchnesses of the six paths. Seven wisdoms, from the five calming contemplations and four establishments of mindfulness through wisdom embodying Dharmas, illuminate the ten suchnesses of the Two Vehicles. Wisdom of the six perfections and the Shared Teaching bodhisattva wisdom emerging into the provisional each have two affiliations: in seeking the Buddha path above, they illuminate the bodhisattva ten suchnesses; in transforming below, they illuminate the six paths’ ten suchnesses. The wisdom of the Distinct Teaching’s forty minds likewise has two affiliations: in seeking above it illuminates the bodhisattva ten suchnesses, and in transforming below it illuminates the six paths’ ten suchnesses. The wisdom of the ten grounds also has two affiliations: when it illuminates sequentially it illuminates the bodhisattva ten suchnesses; when it illuminates non-sequentially it illuminates the Buddha’s ten suchnesses. The four wisdoms beginning with the Perfect Teaching’s five grades all illuminate the ten suchnesses of the Buddha realm. This is only a general summary; the details can be unfolded.

When the twenty wisdoms illuminate the four kinds of twelve-link objects, the seven wisdoms of worldly wisdom, the five calming contemplations and four establishments of mindfulness, the four wholesome roots, the four fruits, pratyekabuddhas, the six perfections, and the Buddha of the Tripiṭaka Teaching illuminate the conceivable twelve-link object that arises and ceases. The five wisdoms of the Shared Teaching’s Three Vehicles entering the true, the bodhisattva emerging into the provisional, and the Buddha of the Shared Teaching illuminate the conceivable twelve-link object that neither arises nor ceases. The four wisdoms of the Distinct Teaching’s ten faiths, thirty minds, ten grounds, and Buddha illuminate the inconceivable twelve-link object that arises and ceases. Finer differences remain within these, but this is the broad judgment. The Perfect Teaching’s four wisdoms illuminate the inconceivable twelve-link object that neither arises nor ceases.

When the twenty wisdoms illuminate the four kinds of Four Truths, the preceding seven wisdoms of the Tripiṭaka Teaching and the rest illuminate the arising-and-ceasing Four Truths, the five wisdoms of the Shared Teaching illuminate the non-arising Four Truths, the four wisdoms of the Distinct Teaching illuminate the immeasurable Four Truths, and the four wisdoms of the Perfect Teaching illuminate the unconstructed Four Truths.

When the twenty wisdoms illuminate the Two Truths, the first seven illuminate the Two Truths that clarify emptiness by analyzing Dharmas; the next five illuminate the Two Truths that clarify emptiness by embodying Dharmas; the latter eight illuminate the Two Truths that reveal the Middle Way. Places where the Distinct and Perfect Teachings mutually include one another can be understood according to the meaning.

When the twenty wisdoms illuminate the Three Truths, the Two Truths illuminated by the first seven do not contain the Middle Way, and all Dharmas arisen from causes and conditions are included in conventional truth. The next five illuminate Two Truths that contain the Middle Way, and the clause “immediately empty” is entirely included in true truth. The eight wisdoms of the Distinct and Perfect Teachings illuminate Two Truths that reveal the Middle Way, and the clauses “it is provisional designation” and “it is also called the Middle Way” are entirely included in the truth of the Middle Way.

When the twenty wisdoms illuminate the truth of one reality, one must rely on the Explanatory Treatise’s statement that all four siddhāntas can be called real: real because of the worldly siddhānta through real because of the ultimate-meaning siddhānta. From this it can be known that true speech likewise extends through all four kinds of Four Truths: real according to arising and ceasing, real according to non-arising and non-ceasing, real according to immeasurability, and real according to the unconstructed. The first seven Tripiṭaka wisdoms illuminate the reality of arising and ceasing; the five Shared wisdoms illuminate the reality of non-arising and non-ceasing; the four Distinct wisdoms illuminate immeasurable reality; and the four Perfect wisdoms illuminate unconstructed reality. The various earlier and later meanings of reality can all be understood accordingly.

When the twenty wisdoms are correlated with no-truth and no-illumination, no-truth is not another special principle. If someone awakens within any of the four kinds of Four Truths, he no longer sees an opposition between truth and non-truth; no-truth therefore also extends through all four. The first seven wisdoms illuminate the no-truth of arising and ceasing because arising-arising is inexpressible. The next five illuminate the no-truth of non-arising and non-ceasing because arising-non-arising is inexpressible. The four Distinct wisdoms illuminate immeasurable no-truth because non-arising-arising is inexpressible. The four Perfect wisdoms illuminate unconstructed no-truth because non-arising-non-arising is inexpressible.

The earlier no-truth is provisional and the latter no-truth real; this distinction is made in terms of verbal teaching. If one speaks from wondrous awakening that is the same as what the minds of noble beings illuminate, one no longer sees provisional or real, and it is therefore neither provisional nor real. It is like using an empty fist to entice a small child: provisionality is taught as skillful means and reality is also taught as skillful means in order to guide all sentient beings. On genuinely integrating and entering principle, provisional and real are no longer present; hence what is neither provisional nor real is called wondrous.

6. Judging Coarse and Wondrous Wisdom

First, judgment is made through the twenty wisdoms: the first twelve kinds are coarse and the latter eight wondrous. Why? The buddhas of the Tripiṭaka and Shared Teachings are themselves impermanent and do not teach permanence. How could the Two Vehicles and bodhisattvas within these teachings hear permanence, trust permanence, or cultivate permanence? They are therefore judged coarse. At the initial stage of the Distinct Teaching’s ten faiths, practitioners already hear, trust, and cultivate permanence and thereby surpass even the buddhas of the preceding two teachings; how much more do the later stages surpass them? They are therefore judged wondrous. Ordinary claims that the Lotus does not teach permanence stop at an understanding of the Tripiṭaka Teaching. Here the ten faiths of the Distinct Teaching already know the Middle Way and surpass the buddhas of the earlier teachings; hence the latter eight kinds are wondrous.

Examined more finely, the Distinct Teaching’s four wisdoms are judged three coarse and one wondrous, while all four wisdoms of the Perfect Teaching are called wondrous. The Masters of the Grounds say the Middle Way can be revealed only at the fruit stage, while beginning students merely look up in faith to this principle, like suspending a mountain by a lotus-root fiber. Their faith and practice are therefore not of the perfect intent. The wisdom of the Distinct Teaching’s ten faiths is consequently coarse. The ten abodes principally cultivate emptiness and concurrently cultivate the provisional and Middle; the ten practices principally cultivate the provisional and concurrently cultivate the Middle; the ten dedications only then begin principally to cultivate the Middle. What is known at this point is an isolated principle that does not yet possess all Dharmas, so these remain coarse. Wisdom upon entering the grounds breaks ignorance, sees the Middle Way, and is wondrous when realization is entered. This resembles the fact that both the Shared and Tripiṭaka Teachings can attain the path, while the Tripiṭaka Dharma gate is more awkward. The Distinct Teaching is likewise still a provisional teaching gate, while its realized entry is wondrous.

All four wisdoms of the Perfect Teaching are wondrous because they are taught according to the true characteristics of all dharmas, trusted according to what is taught, and practiced according to real principle. From the five grades through wondrous awakening they are all real and not merely expedient; hence all are wondrous. This is called speaking of wondrous wisdom in relation to the preceding coarse wisdoms.

Coarse and wondrous can also be judged through knowledge and seeing. Knowledge and seeing have four alternatives: neither knowing nor seeing, knowing but not seeing, seeing but not knowing, and both knowing and seeing. These are first explained according to the Tripiṭaka Teaching and then according to the Perfect Teaching; the intermediate teachings can be inferred.

According to the Tripiṭaka Teaching, ordinary beings have not heard and therefore do not know; they have not realized and therefore do not see. From the five calming contemplations and four establishments of mindfulness through the highest worldly Dharma, people are called knowing because they have heard but do not see because they have not realized. Pratyekabuddhas do not attain through hearing and therefore do not know, yet realize naturally and therefore see. Those at the four fruits have heard and therefore know and have realized and therefore see. These levels can then be transmitted and compared with one another to judge coarse and wondrous.

According to the Perfect Teaching, those in the seven preparatory stages have not heard and therefore do not know, and have not realized and therefore do not see. Those at the five grades and the stage of the six faculties know because of hearing but do not see because they have not directly realized. Some people’s habituation from former lives is activated, enabling them to see without hearing in the present life; this is seeing without knowing. Those who hear according to the teaching and enter realization both know and see. Coarse and wondrous can be judged by comparing the earlier and later levels in each case.

Ultimately, the twenty preceding wisdoms can be summarized as the two wisdoms, provisional and real. The scriptural phrase “the Tathāgata’s skillful knowledge and vision and pāramitā are all fully complete” comprehensively includes all the preceding provisional wisdoms. “The Tathāgata’s knowledge and vision are vast, great, profound, and far-reaching” comprehensively includes all the preceding real wisdoms. Because skillful means are fully complete, nothing is excluded; because knowledge and vision are vast, great, profound, and far-reaching, nothing is left outside. The object resembles an abyss with no boundary, and wisdom resembles great water impossible to measure. Only buddha together with buddha can exhaust it.

Such knowledge and vision is eye and wisdom. Eye means the complete five eyes, while wisdom means the three wisdoms in one mind. The knowledge of all modes knows the real, while the other two wisdoms know the provisional. The Buddha eye sees the real, while the other four eyes see the provisional. This knowing is seeing, and this seeing is knowing. In relation to the preceding wisdoms, they are coarse, while this knowledge and vision is called wondrous.

If the meaning of knowledge and vision has been grasped, the five eyes need not be discussed again. To help those who have not yet understood, coarse and wondrous are judged further through the five eyes. How can a flesh eye that is closed and blind see form? One merely hears another person describe it and produces various imaginings, none of which is genuine seeing. To open the eye, the film over it should be cured. What use is there in arguing with closed eyes? Imagining with closed eyes is coarse; seeing directly with an open eye is wondrous.

Before the divine eye opens, it cannot see beyond obstructing objects and is therefore coarse. Through the power of meditative concentration, vows, and wisdom, a pure faculty of form arises that can see clearly both within and beyond obstructions, with neither light nor darkness presenting any barrier; it is then wondrous. Before the wisdom eye opens, one always travels a dead road. However many affective imaginings arise, none are true, and this is coarse. When uncontaminated wisdom suddenly arises and one clearly sees the principle of the truths, it is wondrous. Before the Dharma eye opens, one does not know faculties and teaches wrongly, like Śāriputra’s one-sided instruction or Pūrṇa putting defiled food into a precious vessel; this is coarse. When the obstructions and delusion of not knowing faculties are broken and one can distinguish medicine from illness, it is wondrous.

Before the Buddha eye opens, one cannot see the true mark. The treatise therefore says that persons of the Two Vehicles, those newly arousing the mind, and non-retrogressing bodhisattvas cannot know it; hence all four eyes are coarse. Excepted are bodhisattvas whose power of faith is firm: entering through faith, they accomplish a Buddha eye in resemblance and can open the Buddha’s real knowing-and-seeing; this alone is called wondrous. Other teachings often explain only four eyes or explain the Buddha eye while carrying the four eyes, so they remain coarse. The present scripture uniquely reveals the Buddha eye and is therefore wondrous. This is speaking of the wondrous in relation to the coarse.

7. Opening Coarse Wisdom to Reveal Wondrous Wisdom

If the first sixteen kinds of wisdom have not been resolved, they are only coarse wisdom. Once resolved, all become wondrous wisdom. King Wondrous Adornment, for example, originally practiced with the worldly wisdom of a non-Buddhist. On hearing the Lotus Sutra, he attained resolution, entered right characteristics through wrong characteristics, cultivated the thirty-seven factors without moving among the various views, and entered the eight rights without abandoning the eight wrongs. This is resolving worldly wisdom and bringing it into wondrous wisdom. The stage entered may correspond to the five grades, resemblance, or partial realization; an appropriate entry occurs at each level, and the detailed meaning can be unfolded.

From the skillful wisdom of the five calming contemplations through the Buddha wisdom of the Shared Teaching, any wisdom that remains unresolved is coarse. Now opening the provisional to reveal the real and teaching that what they practiced was originally the bodhisattva path brings them into the wondrous stages. Each of the first twelve wisdoms should be brought into the four wondrous wisdoms of the Perfect Teaching, whether the five grades, resemblance, or partial realization, according to its corresponding entry. The successive wisdom of the Distinct Teaching is likewise resolved and enters wondrous wisdom; it can be gathered in detail according to the stage it is in itself and the stage it becomes after entry.

Once all sixteen coarse wisdoms become wondrous, no coarse remains with which the wondrous stands in relation. This is the absolute subtlety of wisdom.

Next the coarse eyes are opened into the wondrous eye. Although other scriptures teach the five eyes, those eyes do not interfuse and are therefore coarse. The present scripture resolves the first four eyes and causes all to enter the Buddha eye. The treatise says that the eye born of father and mother attains purity. Although a person studying the Great Vehicle still possesses a flesh eye, it is called the Buddha eye. This is resolving the flesh eye and naming it the Buddha eye.

The Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa Sūtra asks who in the world possesses the true divine eye and answers that only the Buddha, the World-Honored One, sees buddha lands without dual marks. This resolves the divine eye into the Buddha eye. The wish to attain, like the World-Honored One, the foremost purity of the wisdom eye resolves the wisdom eye and brings it into the wondrous. Resolving the Dharma eye into the wondrous is the perfection of wisdom knowing the limits of all Dharmas. The four eyes interfuse with the Buddha eye, quiescent yet constantly illuminating. Hence resolving the Dharma of the śrāvakas makes this king among scriptures. With the five eyes complete, awakening is accomplished and the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing opened; therefore it is called wondrous.

Question: Only the actual opening of the Buddha eye is called wondrous. Why can the purification of the six faculties also be called wondrous?

Answer: Although the Buddha eye has not yet opened completely, the practitioner already studies perfectly and trusts perfectly. It resembles a kalaviṅka bird still within the graph 㲉, “shell,” whose voice already surpasses all other birds. This is nominal subtlety and subtlety of resemblance. Once the eye truly opens, there is subtlety of partial realization and ultimate subtlety. The remaining details can be inferred accordingly.

8. Distinguishing Wisdom in Relation to Five Kinds of Object

Clarifying wisdom in relation to objects again has two parts: first, distinguishing the five kinds of object each wisdom addresses; second, explaining how the wisdoms successively illuminate the preceding objects.

The first part should originally begin by explaining wisdom in relation to the object of the ten suchnesses, but the ten suchnesses are the shared purport of the entire scripture and will be discussed everywhere. Their meaning can be understood, so they are not explained again here.

Four Wisdoms Contemplating the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination

Next, wisdom is explained in relation to the four kinds of twelve-link object. The Great Scripture says contemplation of the twelve links has four kinds: contemplation with lower wisdom attains śrāvaka awakening; contemplation with middle wisdom attains pratyekabuddha awakening; contemplation with upper wisdom attains bodhisattva awakening; contemplation with highest wisdom attains Buddha awakening. The twelve links are originally one object, but differences in the understanding of those who contemplate open them into four objects.

The four contemplations will now be explained according to the intent of the Four Teachings. The Tripiṭaka Teaching has śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and bodhisattvas. All three begin by using analytical wisdom to contemplate the phenomena of the twelve links within the realms. Analytical wisdom is relatively shallow and weak, and among these three kinds of person the śrāvaka has the dullest faculties. The duller person therefore designates the shallower Dharma, which is called lower wisdom.

The Shared Teaching likewise has three kinds of person, all of whom use wisdom embodying Dharmas to contemplate the principle of the twelve links within the realms. Although embodying Dharmas is deeper than analysis, skillful in relation to the Tripiṭaka Teaching, it remains unskillful in relation to the Distinct Teaching. Among the three kinds of person, the pratyekabuddha occupies the middle. The middle person therefore designates the Dharma of the Shared Teaching, which is called middle wisdom.

Both the Buddha and bodhisattva of the Distinct Teaching know the phenomena of the twelve links beyond the realms. A bodhisattva who cultivates in sequence cannot yet be called upper in relation to the Buddha of the Distinct Teaching, but is already an upper Dharma in relation to the Shared and Tripiṭaka Teachings. It is therefore called upper wisdom.

Both the Buddha and bodhisattva of the Perfect Teaching contemplate the principle of the twelve links beyond the realms. From the initial mind, they accord with the Middle in the very phenomena before them. This Dharma is most excellent, so it is designated by the Buddha and called contemplation with highest wisdom. Explaining the four contemplations through the Four Teachings accords with their doctrinal meaning.

How does lower wisdom contemplate? It contemplates in reverse that feeling exists because of contact, contact because of the six sense fields, the six sense fields because of name-and-form, name-and-form because of consciousness, consciousness because of formations, and formations because of ignorance. Ignorance is inversion and unwholesome attention. Unwholesome attention creates unwholesome formations and brings the consciousness, name-and-form, and the rest of the four evil destinations. Wholesome attention creates wholesome formations and brings the consciousness, name-and-form, and the rest of humans and devas.

It then contemplates that ignorance is impermanent thought after thought, with neither earlier nor later thought able to remain. The wholesome and unwholesome produced from it also change swiftly and quickly decay. The name-and-form received continually decline and are replaced. Affliction, karma, and suffering mutually act as causes and conditions without stopping for a moment. The two past causes of ignorance and formations bring the five present results of consciousness, name-and-form, six sense fields, contact, and feeling. The three present causes of craving, grasping, and existence bring the two future results of birth and aging-and-death. The three times cycle repeatedly like a turning wheel.

Since the root of deluded confusion is impermanent, suffering, empty, and without self, ignorance ceases. Because ignorance ceases, formations cease, and so on through the cessation of aging-and-death. Without lighting a fire, there is no smoke. This is called severing bondage of the causal seed. Without the causal seed, there is no subsequent result. Finally, with the wisdom of cessation one causes the body to return to ash-like quiescence and leaves the twenty-five forms of existence. This is called severing bondage of result. This is lower wisdom contemplating the twelve links and attaining śrāvaka awakening.

Middle wisdom likewise contemplates in reverse that feeling exists because of contact through formations existing because of ignorance. Ignorance is only a single thought of deluded mind. Mind has no identifiable form or material obstruction and receives only an established name. When this name is sought within, without, and between within and without, it cannot be found. It cannot be said to abide or not abide and resembles an illusion that deceives the eyes.

The substance and characteristic of ignorance are originally unreal; it arises only through the conjunction of the conditions of false imagination. Precisely because nothing real exists, it is provisionally named ignorance. Unwholesome attention is created by mental activity. Because sentient beings do not understand that ignorance is illusory, they produce wholesome and unwholesome attention, then wholesome and unwholesome formations, and receive wholesome and unwholesome name-and-form, contact, and feeling. Now penetrating ignorance as illusory, one knows that formations are also illusory transformations and that consciousness, name-and-form, and the rest produced from illusory formations are all illusory. Craving, grasping, existence, and birth make the three times rotate, yet are likewise only illusory transformations and change, without one real Dharma. A person with wisdom should produce neither craving nor anger within them.

Since ignorance is unobtainable, ignorance does not arise; because it does not arise, neither does it cease. Formations through aging-and-death likewise neither arise nor cease. Because they do not arise, they are not newly produced; because they do not cease, they are not old Dharmas. Without an old Dharma, there is no old result that must be extinguished; without a new Dharma, there is no new cause that can be created. Because there is nothing new, bondage of the causal seed is severed; because there is nothing old, bondage of result is severed. This is middle wisdom contemplating the twelve links and attaining pratyekabuddha awakening.

Upper wisdom likewise contemplates in reverse that feeling exists because of contact through formations existing because of ignorance. Ignorance is only a single thought of deluded mind. Because mind is deluded, various afflictions are distinguished; from afflictions various forms of karma are distinguished; and from karma various forms of suffering are distinguished. It closely contemplates that the kinds of affliction differ. Because afflictions differ, karmas differ; because karmas differ, suffering differs. The various formations are not one, and name-and-form also differ. The various paths of affliction, karma, and suffering are immeasurable and boundless, yet can be clearly distinguished without confusion.

It knows that this affliction produces this karma and receives this suffering without involving another karma or another affliction. The three paths in this way cover the three virtues of prajñā, liberation, and Dharma body, so skillful means for breaking the obstructions are likewise immeasurable. When ignorance is broken, prajñā is revealed. When karma is broken, liberation is revealed. When consciousness and name-and-form are broken, the Dharma body is revealed. Craving, grasping, existence, and aging-and-death are distinguished in the same way. After attaining understanding for oneself, one can also teach others, know all Dharmas within every kind, produce wisdom of the varieties of the path, and guide and benefit sentient beings. This is upper wisdom contemplating the twelve links.

Highest wisdom likewise contemplates in reverse that feeling exists because of contact through formations existing because of ignorance, yet knows that the three paths included within the twelve links are in their very identity the three virtues. Since the three paths are the three virtues, how could one first sever and destroy the three virtues and then seek them somewhere else? Doing so would instead destroy the true mark of all dharmas.

The path of affliction is itself prajñā, so affliction is not really dark. Prajñā is itself affliction, so prajñā has no separate real brightness. Since affliction is not really dark, why sever it separately? Since prajñā has no separate brightness, what could it break? Darkness is originally not dark, and no separate brightness must be sought to counteract it. Just as Jīvaka can transform poison into medicine, how could this thing be discarded to obtain another?

The path of karma is itself liberation, so karma is not really bondage. Liberation is itself karma, so liberation has no separate freedom. Since karma is not real bondage, what is there to leave? Since liberation has no separate freedom, what is there to attain? It resembles a person with superknowledge who need not flee this place to go somewhere else.

The path of suffering is itself the Dharma body, so suffering is not really birth and death. The Dharma body is itself birth and death, so the Dharma body has no separate pleasure to crave. Since suffering is not really birth and death, what is there to grieve? Since the Dharma body has no separate pleasure, what is there to delight in? It resembles empty space, which has neither gain nor loss and neither joy nor sorrow.

When contemplated in this way, the three paths do not differ from the three virtues, and the three virtues do not differ from the three paths. All Buddha-Dharmas are complete precisely within the three paths. The three paths are the three virtues; the three virtues are great nirvāṇa and are called the secret treasury. The Buddha fruit is thereby complete. Deep contemplation of the twelve links is sitting at the site of awakening; the Buddha cause is thereby complete. Buddha cause and Buddha fruit are both fully complete, and the rest can be inferred. This is highest wisdom contemplating the twelve links and attaining Buddha awakening.

According to these four contemplations, coarse and wondrous should also be judged and the coarse opened to reveal the wondrous. The meaning can be understood and is not recorded in detail. Each of the four wisdoms illuminates one of four objects. If the objects do not turn, the wisdom illuminating them is coarse. If the four objects turn into wondrous objects, the coarse wisdoms immediately become wondrous wisdoms, still possessing both relational and absolute meanings.

Four Wisdoms Contemplating the Four Truths

Next, wisdom is explained in relation to the four kinds of Four Truths. The Great Scripture says that wisdom knowing the noble truths has two kinds, middle and upper. Middle wisdom belongs to śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas; upper wisdom belongs to buddhas and bodhisattvas. According to this scriptural passage, embodying and analytical wisdom are combined as middle wisdom, while those of sharp and dull faculties within the Great Vehicle are combined as upper wisdom.

When these are unfolded according to sharp and dull faculties, within and beyond the realms, and phenomena and principle, they become four. Śrāvakas have dull faculties, condition the phenomena of the Four Truths, and produce wisdom of the arising-and-ceasing Four Truths. Pratyekabuddhas have sharp faculties, condition the principle of the Four Truths, and produce wisdom of the non-arising Four Truths. Bodhisattvas have relatively shallow wisdom, condition inconceivable phenomena, and produce wisdom of the immeasurable Four Truths. Buddhas have profound wisdom, condition inconceivable principle, and produce wisdom of the unconstructed Four Truths. This is one mode of opening and combining found in the Great Scripture.

The Great Scripture also says that ordinary beings have suffering but no truth, while śrāvakas have both suffering and the truth of suffering. Ordinary beings cannot see the principle within suffering and are therefore said to have no truth. Śrāvakas can see impermanence, suffering, and emptiness and are therefore said to have truth. This is wisdom of the arising-and-ceasing Four Truths.

The scripture also says that bodhisattvas understand suffering as without suffering, yet possess true truth. Because they embody suffering as itself not suffering, it says there is no suffering; because they see the true in the very phenomena, it says they possess truth. This is wisdom of the non-arising Four Truths in a Great Vehicle Dharma gate.

The scripture also says that knowing the aggregates as suffering, knowing the sense fields as gates and also calling them suffering, and knowing the elements as divisions, as nature, and also as knowing is called middle wisdom. According to the preceding passage, this should belong to śrāvaka wisdom. Yet the scripture next says that the various forms of suffering, sense fields, and elements each have immeasurable characteristics that the Buddha did not exhaustively explain in that scripture. Feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness are likewise and cannot be known by śrāvakas or pratyekabuddhas. This differs from the preceding two meanings. Since it is called upper wisdom and does not belong to the Two Vehicles, it can precisely be understood as a bodhisattva of the Distinct Teaching contemplating Buddha-Dharmas as numerous as Ganges sands and the principle of tathāgatagarbha. This is wisdom of the immeasurable Four Truths.

The scripture further says that the Tathāgata is not suffering, not origination, not cessation, not path, and not truth, but is real; space too is not suffering and not truth, but is real. “Not suffering” means it is not false birth and death. “Not truth” means it is not the nirvāṇa of the Two Vehicles. “Real” means the true mark, Middle Way, and buddha-nature.

The scripture also says there is suffering, cause of suffering, exhaustion of suffering, and counteraction to suffering, while the Tathāgata is not suffering through not counteraction and is therefore real. Since this meaning differs from the preceding three sets, it is wisdom of the unconstructed Four Truths. As suffering is divided into four, the other three truths should be likewise: there is origination, result of origination, exhaustion of origination, and counteraction to origination; there is exhaustion, cause of exhaustion, obstruction to exhaustion, and characteristic of the obstruction to exhaustion; there is counteraction, result of counteraction, obstruction to counteraction, and characteristic of the obstruction to counteraction. The Tathāgata is none of the sixteen aspects made by the four aspects of each truth and is only real.

When the various wisdoms above contemplate the Four Truths, if the truths have not yet interfused, both wisdom and truth are coarse. Among them, only what is not suffering and not counteraction but real is wondrous. When the truths interfuse perfectly, wisdom interfuses with them, and all become the wondrous wisdom in which the Tathāgata is not suffering and not truth but real. This possesses both relational and absolute meanings.

This point ends the first part of Fascicle Three of the Fahua Xuanyi. What follows enters the second part of Fascicle Three and bears the attribution that Master Zhiyi of Tiantai taught it.

Seven Sets of Provisional and Real Wisdom

Third, wisdom in relation to the object of the Two Truths means provisional wisdom and real wisdom. The preceding text opened true and conventional truth into seven kinds; provisional and real wisdom are now likewise opened into seven sets: analytical provisional and real wisdom; provisional and real wisdom embodying Dharmas; provisional and real wisdom embodying Dharmas and containing the Middle; provisional and real wisdom embodying Dharmas and revealing the Middle; provisional and real wisdom of the Distinct Teaching; provisional and real wisdom of the Distinct Teaching containing the Perfect; and provisional and real wisdom of the Perfect Teaching. These include four internal and external modes of identity and nonidentity together with three forms of connection, making seven sets.

Each of the preceding seven sets of Two Truths opens into three: according to sentient beings’ dispositions, according to dispositions together with wisdom, and according to wisdom, making twenty-one kinds of truth. The seven sets of two wisdoms now likewise each open into three: provisional and real wisdom for transforming others; provisional and real wisdom of one’s own practice together with transforming others; and provisional and real wisdom of one’s own practice. These make twenty-one kinds of provisional and real wisdom.

First is analytical provisional and real wisdom. The wisdom illuminating all the manifold differences of phenomena is provisional; the wisdom exhausting the real principle of those differences is real. When these two wisdoms teach people of various faculties and conditions, they make various appropriate distinctions according to differences in desire, suitability, counteraction, and awakening. Although the teachings are many, none go beyond analytical provisional and real wisdom; there are therefore two wisdoms for transforming others.

Both provisional and real wisdom taught to others follow conditions. When comprehensively gathered, both are called provisional wisdom. The provisional and real internally realized are both actual realization and, when comprehensively gathered, are called real wisdom. Comparing outward teaching with inner realization gives provisional and real wisdom of one’s own practice together with transforming others. Within the provisional and real of personal realization, which oneself alone understands and others cannot see, provisional and real can again be distinguished; hence there are provisional and real wisdoms of one’s own practice.

Distinguishing further according to the Tripiṭaka Teaching, the Buddha mostly uses the real wisdom of transforming others to teach the Two Vehicles. The Two Vehicles receive this transforming-other reality and cultivate it into the real wisdom of their own practice, so the Buddha confirms that he and Kāśyapa sit together upon the bed of liberation. The Buddha mostly uses the provisional wisdom of transforming others to teach bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas receive this transforming-other provisionality and cultivate it into the provisional wisdom of their own practice, and the Buddha likewise confirms that he is the same. Compared with the two wisdoms embodying Dharmas, all three kinds of two wisdoms are merely provisional. Nāgārjuna therefore first challenges how the path of awakening could be cultivated in an impure mind and then uses the simile of a poisoned vessel unfit to hold food to refute the analytical meaning: food placed in a poisoned vessel would kill. Viewed from the next set, all three kinds of the first set are judged provisional.

Second is provisional and real wisdom embodying Dharmas. It embodies the manifold forms as empty in their very identity. Illuminating form is provisional wisdom; illuminating emptiness is real wisdom. According to the wording of Great Prajñā recorded by the treatise, “form itself is emptiness; it is not that form is extinguished and then becomes empty,” which directly clarifies this meaning.

Provisional and real are taught for different faculties and conditions, and because faculties and conditions differ, teachings take various forms. Although these teachings differ, all are included within provisional and real wisdom embodying Dharmas; there are therefore two wisdoms for transforming others. Since the two transforming-other wisdoms are taught according to dispositions, both are called provisional. Since the provisional and real of inner realization are personally realized, both are called real. Comparing one’s own reality with others’ provisionality produces the two wisdoms of one’s own practice together with transforming others. Distinguishing provisional and real again within one’s own realization produces the two wisdoms of one’s own practice. Compared with the two wisdoms containing the Middle, all three kinds are again called provisional because the Middle Way is not yet present.

Third is provisional and real wisdom embodying Dharmas and containing the Middle. It embodies form as immediately empty, while this emptiness also contains nonemptiness. Illuminating form is provisional wisdom; illuminating emptiness and nonemptiness is real wisdom. These two wisdoms address immeasurable faculties and conditions and teach in many different ways according to sentient beings’ affective views. Although the different teachings are immeasurable, they are all included in the two wisdoms containing the Middle; hence there are two wisdoms for transforming others. Transforming others responds to faculties and is comprehensively called provisional. The two wisdoms of personal realization are comprehensively called real. Distinguishing provisional and real again within personal realization gives two wisdoms of one’s own practice. Compared with the two wisdoms revealing the Middle, all three remain provisional because they still carry empty truth and the skillful means of the teaching path.

Fourth is provisional and real wisdom embodying Dharmas and revealing the Middle. It embodies form as immediately empty and nonempty and also clarifies that all Dharmas converge upon emptiness and nonemptiness. Knowing form is provisional wisdom. Knowing emptiness and nonemptiness and that all Dharmas converge upon emptiness and nonemptiness is real wisdom. Teaching these two wisdoms for immeasurable faculties and conditions produces immeasurable teachings, all included within the two wisdoms revealing the Middle; hence there are two wisdoms for transforming others. Transforming others follows conditions and is comprehensively called provisional. Personal realization is attainment and is comprehensively called real. Comparing personal realization with transforming others gives the two wisdoms of one’s own practice together with transforming others. Distinguishing provisional and real again within personal realization gives two wisdoms of one’s own practice. Compared with the provisional and real wisdom of the Distinct Teaching, all three are still called provisional because they continue to carry immediate emptiness and the skillful means of the teaching path.

Fifth is provisional and real wisdom of the Distinct Teaching. It embodies form as immediately empty and also nonempty. Form and emptiness both belong to provisional wisdom; nonemptiness alone is real wisdom. These two wisdoms make various distinctions according to hundreds and thousands of faculties and conditions. Although the distinctions are many, all are included within sequential provisional and real wisdom; hence there are two wisdoms for transforming others. Everything taught to others is for faculties and conditions and is comprehensively called provisional. The two wisdoms of personal realization are direct realization and are comprehensively called real. Comparing self and other produces the two wisdoms of one’s own practice together with transforming others. Distinguishing the two wisdoms within personal realization produces the two wisdoms of one’s own practice. Compared with the two wisdoms of the Distinct Teaching containing the Perfect, all three remain provisional because they carry sequence and the teaching path.

Sixth is provisional and real wisdom of the Distinct Teaching containing the Perfect. Form is empty and also nonempty, and all Dharmas converge upon nonemptiness. Empty form is provisional wisdom; all Dharmas converging upon nonemptiness is real wisdom. These two wisdoms make various distinctions according to hundreds and thousands of faculties and conditions. Although the distinctions are many, all are included within the Distinct Teaching’s two wisdoms containing the Perfect; hence there are two wisdoms for transforming others. Transforming others is for conditions and is comprehensively called provisional. The two wisdoms of personal realization are direct realization and are comprehensively called real. Comparing self and other produces two wisdoms. Distinguishing provisional and real again within personal realization gives two wisdoms of one’s own practice. Compared with the Perfect Teaching’s two wisdoms, all three remain provisional because they still carry sequence and the teaching path.

Seventh is provisional and real wisdom of the Perfect Teaching. Form is immediately empty and immediately nonempty, and all Dharmas converge upon form, emptiness, and nonemptiness. All Dharmas converging upon form and emptiness is provisional wisdom; all Dharmas converging upon nonemptiness is real wisdom. This real wisdom is itself provisional wisdom, and provisional wisdom is itself real wisdom; the two have no separating difference.

To teach sentient beings, various teachings are given according to different causes and conditions, desires, suitability, counteraction, and awakening. Although the teachings are many, all are included within the Perfect Teaching’s two wisdoms; hence there are two wisdoms for transforming others. Since transforming others follows sentient beings’ affective views, it is comprehensively called provisional. The two wisdoms of personal realization are comprehensively called real. Distinguishing two wisdoms again within personal realization produces three different kinds. This set of two wisdoms no longer carries the eighteen kinds of skillful two wisdoms of analysis and the rest that preceded it. It alone is true provisionality and true reality and is called the Buddha’s provisional and real wisdom. The scripture’s description of the Tathāgata’s knowledge and vision as vast, great, profound, and far-reaching and of the pāramitā of skillful means as fully complete applies only to this set, which is called wondrous and stands in relation to the preceding sets as coarse.

Judgment can then be made level by level. From analytical two wisdoms through the two wisdoms revealing the Middle are twelve kinds. Compared with the three that reveal the Middle, all nine preceding kinds are called coarse, while those revealing the Middle are wondrous, because the subtlety of revealing the Middle does not differ from later subtlety. Beginning with sequential two wisdoms are nine kinds; the sequential are coarse and the non-sequential wondrous. One can also judge all eighteen preceding kinds of two wisdoms coarse, with only the three non-sequential kinds wondrous. Within the three non-sequential kinds, the first two can again be judged coarse and the final kind wondrous.

Distinguished through the Five Flavors, the milk teaching has three sets and nine kinds of two wisdoms; the curds teaching has one set and three kinds; raw ghee has four sets and twelve kinds; refined ghee has three sets and nine kinds; the present scripture has only two sets and three kinds. The provisional and real of the curds teaching are entirely coarse, while those of the clarified-essence teaching are entirely wondrous. Each of the other three flavors contains both coarse and wondrous, as can be understood from the preceding meaning.

Without using the preceding seven sets and twenty-one kinds to explain the wisdoms, the meaning of the various different statements in scriptures and treatises would be very difficult to clarify. For example, when the Avataṃsaka explains the mind of the first abode, the wording recorded by this treatise is that “buddhas of the three times do not know the wisdom of the first abode.” People interpret it as wisdom of suchness, saying that the Buddha cannot know the Buddha’s own wisdom of suchness and cannot know the wisdom of suchness of the first abode, believing this doctrinally coherent. It is in fact not appropriate.

If buddhas of the Tripiṭaka and Shared Teachings do not discuss wisdom of suchness at all, how could they be said not to know their own wisdom of suchness? If the first abode of the Distinct Teaching has not yet attained wisdom of suchness, how could a buddha be said not to know it? If the levels of wisdom explained above are understood, the passage can be read as saying that buddhas of the Tripiṭaka Teaching in the three times do not know the wisdom of the first abode in the Perfect Teaching. Explained in this way, it presents no obstruction in either phenomena or principle. This passage has two levels of meaning: first distinguishing twenty-one kinds of provisional and real wisdom, and second speaking of subtlety in relation to the coarse.

When the coarse is opened to reveal the wondrous, all skillful truths interfuse into wondrous truths, and the wisdoms established according to those truths are no longer coarse. It resembles a lowly person’s poor dwelling becoming dignified when a king passes and the various streams entering the sea and sharing one salty flavor. Opening every coarse wisdom makes it immediately wondrous wisdom.

The two wisdoms have a broad range and should be understood throughout by analogy with their classes. Here twenty-one kinds of provisional and real wisdom are established in relation to seven kinds of Two Truths as chapter divisions. Once this meaning is understood, the twelve-link objects should be treated similarly: one can establish analytical wisdom of dependent origination, wisdom embodying dependent origination, wisdom of dependent origination containing the Middle, wisdom of dependent origination revealing the Middle, sequential wisdom of dependent origination, wisdom of dependent origination carrying sequence, and non-sequential wisdom of dependent origination. Each has three kinds—transforming others, one’s own practice together with transforming others, and one’s own practice—making twenty-one. Coarse and wondrous can again be distinguished, the number in each of the Five Flavors judged, and relational and absolute discussed. The Four Truths, Three Truths, and one truth can all be inferred in the same way and need not each be recorded in detail.

Question: Why are the truths established according to sentient beings’ dispositions and the wisdoms that transform others immeasurable, while the truths seen according to wisdom and the wisdoms of one’s own practice are not many?

Answer: Consider only a single person who has not yet attained the path: the mind of views arises horizontally, producing endless wrong attachments. How much more is this true when many people differ in many ways? Teaching according to dispositions is therefore immeasurable. What wisdom sees is principle, and principle is one and does not diverge within itself. Differences in the Two Truths have already been explained.

Are the seven sets and twenty-one kinds of provisional and real wisdom taught here adopted from worldly attachments and views? Do they reuse worldly phrases? Do they copy meanings established by various treatises? None of these. They do not follow worldly people or existing writings and commentaries but are explained by investigating Great and Small Vehicle scriptures. Whether breaking or establishing, they clarify the purport of the Lotus.

When skillful and awkward are compared, the two wisdoms in Shared-Teaching scriptures are used to break those in Tripiṭaka scriptures. This continues until sequential and non-sequential are compared, when the Perfect Teaching’s two wisdoms break those of the Distinct Teaching. Since the wisdoms clarified by expedient scriptures are coarse, how could treatises interpreting those expedient scriptures instead become wondrous? Scriptures and treatises have their own levels, and those who promote them need not attack one another. One need only allow each to speak; the level into which it falls will reveal itself.

An explanation of provisional and real through arising and ceasing falls only into the first set. An explanation through non-arising and non-ceasing falls only into the second, and one can continue distinguishing in this way through the seventh. Even if scriptures and treatises are cited extensively to adorn one’s teaching, it may still fail to go beyond the first set’s Two Truths according to dispositions and provisional and real wisdom for transforming others, still less the second and third kinds of provisional and real wisdom in that first set. If it may not escape even the first set’s three kinds, how much less the seventh set’s three?

If only the first set of two wisdoms is used, one can broadly break worldly affective attachments, yet even on entering the conjured city one attains only the real wisdom of one’s own practice, not the provisional wisdom of transforming others. How much less can one attain the wisdoms of the later sets? If one can truly trace the twenty-one kinds of two wisdoms, one should examine how many non-Buddhist views they break, how many provisional scriptures and treatises they break, how many correct meanings they reveal, and how many provisional scriptures and treatises they establish. Only then can they be called wondrous provisionality and wondrous reality.

Worldly people do not recognize the meaning of even one or two kinds of provisional and real wisdom but directly take the calculations of their affective views as wisdom. If it is truly wisdom, which delusions has it broken and which principles has it seen? If it has neither seen principle nor broken delusion and birth and death still rolls on without limit, what can it be but an affective view?

Clarifying wondrous wisdom in relation to the preceding coarse wisdoms is the Lotus’s intent of breaking relationality. If one can integrate and enter, the truths clarified by all provisional scriptures and treatises become wondrous principle and no place is other than the ground of wisdom; the two wisdoms clarified by all provisional scriptures and treatises become wondrous wisdom and all are great carriages. Breaking and integration of such depth and breadth cannot be compared simplistically with the Treatise on the Middle. This should be pondered well.

Five Kinds of Three Wisdoms

Fourth, wisdom is explained in relation to the object of the Three Truths. Five kinds of Three Truths were explained above and will now be distinguished further.

When the three wisdoms illuminate the ten Dharma realms, the ten realms are first gathered into three classes: contaminated, uncontaminated, and neither contaminated nor uncontaminated. These three Dharmas enter one another in five different ways. First, neither contaminated nor uncontaminated is included in the uncontaminated, which then forms three Dharmas together with contaminated and uncontaminated. Second, all Dharmas are included in the uncontaminated, which then forms three together with contaminated and uncontaminated. Third, contaminated, uncontaminated, and neither contaminated nor uncontaminated are each separately established. Fourth, all Dharmas converge upon neither contaminated nor uncontaminated, which then forms three together with contaminated and uncontaminated. Fifth, all Dharmas simultaneously converge upon contaminated, uncontaminated, and neither contaminated nor uncontaminated.

After the five kinds of Three-Truth object are explained, five kinds of three wisdoms are correlated with them. Omniscience, wisdom of the varieties of the path, and the knowledge of all modes have five modes of mutual entry: first, Middle wisdom enters empty wisdom and then forms three with wisdom of the varieties of the path; second, tathāgatagarbha wisdom enters empty wisdom and then forms three with wisdom of the varieties of the path; third, Middle wisdom and the other two wisdoms separately face one another as three; fourth, tathāgatagarbha wisdom enters Middle wisdom and then forms three with the other two; fifth, the three wisdoms perfectly interfuse. These are the five differences.

First, Middle wisdom enters empty wisdom. Omniscience first arises in dependence upon an uncontaminated object; wisdom of the varieties of the path next arises in dependence upon a contaminated object; finally one deeply contemplates the emptiness of the uncontaminated, knows that emptiness too is empty, and produces the knowledge of all modes. At the initial mind one does not yet know that emptiness is empty. Next, although emptiness is attained, one cannot yet empty this emptiness. Finally, by deeply contemplating emptiness, one also empties the preceding emptiness. The two emptinesses have the same name and the two objects combine, so this is called mutual entry.

Distinguished separately, uncontaminated emptiness is omniscience, contaminated emptiness is wisdom of the varieties of the path, and Middle-Way emptiness is the knowledge of all modes. Taking the meaning from scriptures and treatises, people say that at the sixth ground the severance of delusion equals that of an arhat, at the seventh one cultivates the path of skillful means, and at the eighth path and contemplation flow together and one breaks ignorance and becomes a buddha. This is precisely the meaning of this level.

Second, tathāgatagarbha wisdom enters empty wisdom. Omniscience and wisdom of the varieties of the path arise in dependence upon contaminated and uncontaminated objects as in the preceding kind. Later, however, one does not condition another object and cultivate Middle wisdom separately; one need only contemplate emptiness deeply to see nonemptiness, and nonemptiness is the tathāgatagarbha. Because tathāgatagarbha and emptiness combine, this is called mutual entry. By deeply contemplating emptiness and seeing nonemptiness, one produces the knowledge of all modes.

In the preceding kind, Middle wisdom reveals only an isolated principle, and neither principle nor wisdom possesses all Dharmas. Here, tathāgatagarbha principle and tathāgatagarbha wisdom possess all Dharmas and are therefore different. Tathāgatagarbha wisdom forms three wisdoms together with the preceding two. The wording recorded from the Great Scripture says that śrāvakas see only emptiness and do not see nonemptiness, while the wise see both emptiness and nonemptiness. The wording recorded from Great Prajñā says that omniscience is śrāvaka wisdom, wisdom of the varieties of the path bodhisattva wisdom, and the knowledge of all modes Buddha wisdom. All can clarify this meaning.

Third, Middle wisdom and the other two wisdoms separately face one another. Each wisdom conditions its own object and gives rise to its own wisdom, sequentially deeper and shallower, without being mixed into the others. The Bodhisattvabhūmi Sūtra therefore records that a bodhisattva at the lineage stage arouses the mind wishing to remove the two obstructions and, whether or not a buddha is present, can certainly sever the afflictions in sequence. This directly clarifies the present meaning.

Fourth, tathāgatagarbha wisdom enters Middle wisdom. The first two wisdoms are the same as above, while the knowledge of all modes differs slightly. In the preceding kind, the Middle object was an isolated Middle principle. To reveal this principle one had to cultivate the myriad practices, so the wisdom revealing principle was called the knowledge of all modes. Now tathāgatagarbha principle originally contains all Dharmas, so this is not merely a wisdom that reveals an isolated principle. It is therefore also called the knowledge of all modes, yet differs from the preceding kind. Forming three wisdoms by placing this wisdom with the preceding two gives the present three.

The Masters of the Grounds’ teaching that conditioned cultivation reveals true cultivation and that when true cultivation arises conditioned cultivation is no longer needed expresses this level. The first two wisdoms are conditioned cultivation; the later wisdom when it arises is true cultivation. True cultivation itself possesses all Dharmas and need not borrow any other Dharma.

Fifth are the perfectly interfused three wisdoms. Contaminated Dharma is itself Dharma arisen from causes and conditions and is immediately empty, immediately provisional, and immediately the Middle. Uncontaminated Dharma is likewise immediately provisional and immediately the Middle. Neither contaminated nor uncontaminated is likewise immediately empty and immediately provisional. One Dharma is the three Dharmas, and the three Dharmas are one Dharma. One wisdom is the three wisdoms, and the three wisdoms are one wisdom. Wisdom is itself object, and object is itself wisdom, perfectly interfused, penetrative, and unobstructed. How could such three wisdoms be the same as the preceding four kinds?

The wording recorded from the Explanatory Treatise, “the three wisdoms are attained in one mind,” says there is no before and after. The names of three wisdoms are established only to explain them to people and make them easy to understand.

For wisdom actually to manifest, it must be accomplished through contemplative practice. In general explanation, both contemplation and wisdom extend through cause and result. When distinguished, contemplation is cause and wisdom result. This resembles buddha-nature extending through cause and result, while in distinct explanation the cause is called buddha-nature and the result nirvāṇa. According to the distinct meaning here, contemplation is cause and accomplishes wisdom as result.

The wording recorded from the Yingluo says that entering emptiness from the provisional is called contemplation of the Two Truths, entering the provisional from emptiness is called equal contemplation, and these two contemplations are the path of skillful means through which one enters contemplation of the Middle Way’s ultimate truth. Taking contemplation entering emptiness from the provisional as cause, the result attained is called omniscience. Taking contemplation entering the provisional from emptiness as cause, the result attained is called wisdom of the varieties of the path. Taking contemplation of the Middle as cause, the result attained is called the knowledge of all modes.

Wisdom has above been divided briefly into five kinds. According to contemplation accomplishing wisdom, there should likewise be five kinds, whose details can be inferred. The detailed meaning of cultivating contemplation should be read together with the Mohe Zhiguan.

In judging coarse and wondrous, although the two Buddha stations of the Tripiṭaka and Shared Teachings bear the name “the knowledge of all modes,” they have no separate Middle principle and break no separate class of delusion. This wisdom is therefore not established and is not adopted here. Although Middle wisdom entering empty wisdom speaks of the Middle Way as cause, it accomplishes the first two wisdoms through the Shared gate, and the Middle Way it later illuminates has no vast function. Because the cause proceeds through a more awkward teaching and the result does not interfuse, it is coarse.

In tathāgatagarbha wisdom entering empty wisdom, teaching, result, and principle interfuse, but the cause still proceeds through the Shared gate, so it is coarse. In Middle wisdom separately facing the other two, although it does not proceed through the Shared gate, the three wisdoms remain separated and the result and teaching have not interfused, so it is coarse. In tathāgatagarbha wisdom entering Middle wisdom, the result interfuses but the cause proceeds through the Distinct gate, so its cause remains coarse. Only in the perfectly interfused three wisdoms are cause perfect, result perfect, cause wondrous, result wondrous, truth wondrous, and wisdom wondrous. Directly abandoning skillful means and teaching only the unsurpassed path, this is wondrous wisdom.

Across the Five Flavors, the milk teaching has three kinds of three wisdoms, the curds teaching one, raw ghee all five, and refined ghee also all five. Their coarse and wondrous can be understood from the preceding meaning. The Lotus has only one kind of three wisdoms. This is the present scripture’s breaking of the preceding and belongs to relational wondrousness.

In opening the coarse to clarify the wondrous, even worldly wisdom, originally devoid of world-transcending Dharma of the path, can enter right characteristics through wrong characteristics. Livelihood and productive work do not contradict the true mark; after opening and revealing, lowering the head and raising a hand all become the Buddha path. How much more is this true of the world-transcending wisdoms of the Three Vehicles? The Great Scripture records that śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas are both real and false: real because they have severed afflictions, false because they do not permanently abide. Ordinary beings have not severed afflictions and possess only falsity without reality, yet even they can open the coarse, enter the wondrous, and accomplish the Great Vehicle. How much more can the wisdom of the Two Vehicles? Even those of the Two Vehicles described as ruined in faculties and dead in mind can return to life. How much more can wisdom of the varieties of the path?

When opening occurs in this way, everything is wondrous and nothing is other than the true mark. Great carriages of seven treasures are immeasurable in number. This is the Lotus’s intent of integration and entry and belongs to absolute wondrousness.

Wisdom of Suchness and No-Truth, No-Teaching

Fifth, wisdom in relation to one truth is wisdom of suchness. The wording recorded from the Explanatory Treatise says that all waters entering the sea share one salty flavor, and all wisdoms entering wisdom of suchness lose their original names. From this it can be known that wisdom of suchness comprehensively includes every wisdom and illuminates only one object, just as all currents of water become the one flavor of the sea.

Taking the ten wisdoms as coarse and wisdom of suchness as wondrous is the first level of relationality. Taking the various real wisdoms as coarse and Middle-Way wisdom of suchness as wondrous is the second. When the coarse is opened to reveal the wondrous, not only do the various real wisdoms become wondrous; the ten wisdoms are also all called wondrous.

Since no-truth and no-teaching speak of no truth, there is likewise no wisdom. If no-truth is distinguished throughout the various places, no-truth and no-wisdom in other skillful means are coarse, while no-truth and no-wisdom of the Middle Way are wondrous. If one truly closes the mouth and cuts off words in speaking of no-truth and no-wisdom, there is neither coarse nor wondrous and neither relational nor absolute. Throughout all Dharmas, all are without coarse or wondrous.

9. Six Sets of Wisdom Successively Illuminate One Another

The second great gate is successive mutual illumination. Six sets of wisdom successively turn to illuminate the preceding objects.

First, the four kinds of wisdom concerning the twelve links turn to illuminate the ten Dharma realms. Lower and middle wisdom illuminate the suchnesses of nature, characteristic, and the rest in the six paths. Lower and middle wisdom contemplating cessation of the twelve links illuminate the suchnesses of nature, characteristic, and the rest in the Two Vehicles. Upper wisdom illuminates the nature, characteristic, beginning and end, and the rest of the bodhisattva realm. Highest wisdom illuminates the nature, characteristic, beginning and end, and the rest of the Buddha Dharma realm.

Next, the four kinds of wisdom concerning the Four Truths illuminate the ten Dharma realms. Wisdom of suffering and origination in the arising-and-ceasing and non-arising sets illuminates the suchnesses of nature and characteristic in the six paths. Wisdom of path and cessation in the arising-and-ceasing and non-arising sets illuminates the suchnesses of nature and characteristic in the Two Vehicles. Wisdom of suffering and origination in the immeasurable and unconstructed sets illuminates the nature, characteristic, and the rest of the bodhisattva realm. Wisdom of path and cessation in the immeasurable and unconstructed sets illuminates the nature, characteristic, beginning and end, and the rest of the Buddha Dharma realm.

The four kinds of wisdom concerning the Four Truths also illuminate the four kinds of twelve links. Wisdom of suffering and origination in the arising-and-ceasing and non-arising sets illuminates the two conceivable kinds of twelve links. Wisdom of path and cessation in those two sets illuminates cessation of the two conceivable kinds of twelve links. Wisdom of suffering and origination in the immeasurable and unconstructed sets illuminates the two inconceivable kinds of twelve links. Wisdom of path and cessation in those two sets illuminates cessation of the two inconceivable kinds of twelve links.

Next, the seven kinds of two wisdoms illuminate the ten Dharma realms. The two provisional wisdoms of arising and ceasing and non-arising and non-ceasing, together with the two kinds entering the Shared, make four provisional wisdoms that illuminate nature and characteristic in the six paths. The two real wisdoms of arising and ceasing and non-arising and non-ceasing illuminate nature and characteristic in the Two Vehicles.

The provisional wisdom of the Distinct Teaching and the provisional wisdom of the Perfect entering the Distinct illuminate, on their bounded side, nature and characteristic in the six paths and, on their boundless side, nature and characteristic in the Two Vehicles. The provisional wisdom of the Perfect Teaching generally illuminates nature and characteristic in the nine Dharma realms. The real wisdom of the Distinct entering the Shared illuminates, on its empty side, nature and characteristic in the Two Vehicles and, on its nonempty side, nature and characteristic in the bodhisattva realm. The real wisdom of the Perfect entering the Shared illuminates, on its empty side, nature and characteristic in the Two Vehicles and, on its nonempty side, nature and characteristic in the Buddha realm. The real wisdom of the Distinct Teaching illuminates nature and characteristic in the bodhisattva realm. The real wisdom of the Perfect entering the Distinct and the real wisdom of the Perfect Teaching both illuminate nature and characteristic in the Buddha Dharma realm.

The seven kinds of two wisdoms also illuminate the four kinds of twelve links. The first four provisional wisdoms illuminate the two conceivable kinds of twelve links. The provisional wisdom of the Distinct Teaching and that of the Perfect entering the Distinct illuminate, on their bounded side, the two conceivable kinds of twelve links and, on their boundless side, cessation of those two kinds. The provisional wisdom of the Perfect Teaching can illuminate them generally.

The real wisdom of the Distinct entering the Shared illuminates, on its empty side, cessation of the conceivable twelve links and, on its nonempty side, the inconceivable twelve links. The real wisdom of the Perfect entering the Shared is the same on its empty side, while its nonempty side illuminates cessation of the inconceivable twelve links. The real wisdom of the Distinct Teaching illuminates cessation of the two inconceivable kinds of twelve links. The real wisdom of the Perfect Teaching illuminates cessation of the two inconceivable kinds of twelve links, and so forth.

If they turn again to illuminate the Four Truths, the first four provisional wisdoms illuminate suffering and origination in the arising-and-ceasing and non-arising sets; the latter three provisional wisdoms illuminate suffering and origination in the immeasurable and unconstructed sets. The first two real wisdoms illuminate path and cessation in the two conceivable sets; the latter five real wisdoms illuminate path and cessation in the two inconceivable sets.

When the five kinds of three wisdoms illuminate the ten Dharma realms, the five kinds of wisdom of the varieties of the path illuminate nature, characteristic, beginning and end, and the rest in the six paths. The five kinds of omniscience illuminate nature, characteristic, beginning and end, and the rest in the Two Vehicles and bodhisattva realm. The five forms of the knowledge of all modes illuminate the Buddha Dharma realm’s ten suchnesses of nature, characteristic, and the rest.

When the five kinds of three wisdoms illuminate the four kinds of twelve links, the five kinds of wisdom concerning existence illuminate the two conceivable kinds of twelve links. The five kinds of omniscience illuminate cessation of the two conceivable kinds of twelve links and also illuminate the inconceivable twelve links. The five forms of the knowledge of all modes illuminate cessation of the two inconceivable kinds of twelve links.

When the five kinds of three wisdoms illuminate the four kinds of Four Truths, the five kinds of wisdom of the varieties of the path illuminate suffering and origination in the arising-and-ceasing and non-arising sets. The five kinds of omniscience illuminate path and cessation in the arising-and-ceasing and non-arising sets and also illuminate suffering and origination in the immeasurable and unconstructed sets. The five forms of the knowledge of all modes illuminate path and cessation in the immeasurable and unconstructed sets.

When the five kinds of three wisdoms illuminate the seven kinds of Two Truths, the five kinds of wisdom of the varieties of the path illuminate four kinds of conventional truth. The five kinds of omniscience illuminate two kinds of true truth and also the three conventional truths of the Distinct Teaching, the Perfect entering the Distinct, and the Perfect Teaching. The five forms of the knowledge of all modes illuminate five kinds of true truth.

The one wisdom of suchness simultaneously illuminates the nature and characteristic of the Buddha realm’s ten suchnesses, the inconceivable twelve links, the unconstructed Four Truths, five kinds of true truth, and five kinds of the Middle Way’s ultimate truth.

No-truth and no-teaching accord with characteristic, nature, and suchness among the ten suchnesses; with cessation of the inconceivable twelve links; with the four kinds of non-arising-non-arising; with the wordlessness of true truth; and with the Middle Way that is neither birth and death nor nirvāṇa.

The various wisdoms above successively illuminate the truths level by level. If the truths interfuse, wisdom interfuses. When wisdom and truth interfuse together, it is called wondrous. Yet to call it wondrous or not wondrous remains an expedient teaching. On genuinely seeing principle, provisional and real are no longer present; it is neither provisional nor real and has neither wondrous nor not wondrous. Only for this reason is it called wondrous.

Since the seven kinds of Two Truths and five kinds of Three Truths can enter one another, all the other objects likewise possess this meaning. Since the seven kinds of two wisdoms and five kinds of three wisdoms can enter one another, all the other wisdoms can similarly enter one another and can be inferred according to the preceding examples.

1. A Shadow Does Not Leave Its Form, and an Echo Does Not Leave Its Sound

Question: Since the subtlety of objects has already been explained, why must the subtlety of wisdom be explained separately? The object is truth and wisdom is what knows it. Is it not enough that the two clearly occupy opposite sides?

Answer: If the object is placed outside and wisdom erected within, a boundary that cannot be crossed has already been drawn. Zhiyi does not begin by establishing the knowing mind independently. He says instead that although ultimate principle is profound, it cannot be revealed without wisdom; and although wisdom has the function of illumination, it cannot be called wondrous if the object it illuminates does not interfuse. This does not forcibly paste two things together. It says that subject and object acquire their meanings only through correspondence.

The first simile preserved in Guanding’s record is that of shadow and form, echo and sound. A shadow cannot exist separately from form, and an echo cannot arise independently of sound; yet a shadow truly can reveal form and an echo can respond to sound. Explaining the subtlety of wisdom after the subtlety of objects prevents people from treating the object only as remote and lofty truth while forgetting that it must become an object that can be illuminated, entered, and transformed. It also prevents people from treating wisdom merely as their own cleverness while forgetting that the more clever it becomes without according with its object, the more it may remain only an affective view.

The chapter’s two great gates therefore do not repeat one another. First, the general discussion of the wisdoms identifies how many levels the illuminator has and what the characteristic of each is. Then the discussion of wisdom in relation to objects places wisdom back within the real relationship it illuminates, showing how the same dependent origination and the same truths disclose different depths according to differences in contemplation. Without the latter gate, the former leaves only names for wisdom. Without the former, the latter leaves the object without a road of entry.

2. The Number Twenty Does Not Mark Twenty Isolated Islands

Question: Is the list of twenty wisdoms merely a table of stages running from ordinary beings to the Buddha?

Answer: If one sees only the names and numbers, it indeed resembles a ladder ascending from low to high. But immediately after listing the number, the treatise explains classes, and from classes it proceeds to characteristics. This shows that the twenty are not twenty unrelated boxes. They provisionally mark differences in objects, methods of cultivation, severance and realization, transforming others, and perfect interfusion, enabling the reader to see how wisdom changes.

Worldly wisdom is listed separately not because it is entirely powerless. It can understand loyalty and filiality, arts and crafts, medicine, and astronomy; it can produce superknowledges from concentration and display astonishing powers. Yet these abilities still return to reputation, profit, views, and craving and cannot enable the mind to leave the world. It therefore has knowledge but not the path. The question posed by the subtlety of wisdom is thus not “How much does this wisdom know?” but “Does this knowing illuminate principle, break delusion, and enable entry?” Extensive knowledge and wisdom that leaves the world cannot be confused as one thing.

The five calming contemplations and four establishments of mindfulness already bear the atmosphere of Buddha-Dharma. The former use concentration to restrain disorder, while the latter use contemplation to overturn inversions. Counting the breath, impurity, loving-kindness, dependent origination, and recollection of the Buddha each treat an illness; the four contemplations of body, feeling, mind, and dharmas overturn the four inversions of permanence, pleasure, self, and purity. Yet the ability to treat an illness is not the same as already seeing noble principle, so these still belong to the outer ordinary stage. This judgment is crucial: an effective method does not mean that what one sees is ultimate, and settling the mind does not mean one has been liberated at the root.

The four wholesome roots all belong to the inner ordinary stage, yet receive the chapter’s longest treatment because they display the fine process through which knowledge born of hearing and reflection approaches direct realization. The four fruits all see the true. A pratyekabuddha can erode habitual tendencies through contemplation of specific characteristics. A bodhisattva cultivating the six perfections has strong wisdom regarding phenomena but weak wisdom regarding principle. The various wisdoms of the Shared Teaching enter the true by embodying Dharmas and can also emerge from emptiness into the provisional. The stages of the Distinct Teaching first hear the Middle Way and then cultivate and realize it in sequence. The wisdoms of the Perfect Teaching run from the five grades that still possess the nature of affliction to unsurpassed wondrous awakening. These differences lie not merely in names but in how wisdom faces delusion, principle, sentient beings, and practice.

There are therefore two directions from which to read the twenty wisdoms. Read from first to last, what is illuminated grows deeper, what is broken subtler, and what is realized more perfectly complete. Read from last to first, the highest wisdom does not discard the preceding Dharmas but, through opening and revealing, enables each earlier wisdom to find its place. If the list is read only as successive elimination, one cannot enter the later gate of “opening.”

3. The Four Wholesome Roots: Fire, Mountain, Reduction of Objects, and the Gate of the Noble Path

Question: Warmth, summit, forbearance, and the highest worldly Dharma have not yet seen the truths. Why do they merit such intricate explanation?

Answer: Because what is being described here is precisely the region before conceptual understanding turns into direct realization, a region both near and still subject to retreat.

Warmth is like drilling wood to produce fire, and like bamboo rubbing against bamboo until the fire burns the bamboo grove in return. The five aggregates upon which one relies become what is contemplated, and the wisdom that arises in turn makes those aggregates wither. The simile does not say that wisdom descends from outside. Contemplation arises at the place upon which it relies, and the fire of contemplation takes effect at that very place. A heap of flowers producing heat and the heat making the flowers wither conveys the same meaning: the power of treatment arises from within what is treated, yet prevents its former state from continuing unchanged.

Summit is like the peak of a mountain. A mountain peak is not a dwelling but a narrow place one must cross. Without difficulty one advances; with difficulty one retreats. When still far from the goal, losing a step may not bring intense pain. Near the stage of forbearance, one already sees the benefit of permanently leaving the evil paths; sudden retreat is then like seeing a treasury and losing it just as one is about to take it. The treatise therefore speaks especially of retreat from summit, not because warmth never retreats, but because gain and loss are felt most sharply at summit.

Forbearance is presented through reduction of practices and reduction of objects. It continually narrows the field contemplated, beginning with a broad contemplation of the Four Truths across the three realms, progressively removing objects until two minds contemplate one practice and finally one mind contemplates the suffering of the desire realm. Thought is not becoming poorer. Mind is ceasing to send out branches, and its power is becoming progressively single. The treatise uses the simile of a distant traveler exchanging treasure: a large mass of goods cannot be carried, so it is exchanged first for money, then for gold, and then for a precious jewel of great value. Each reduction in bulk does not diminish value but makes the treasure more capable of crossing the border.

Nor can “first” in the highest worldly Dharma be understood merely as absolutely highest. Compared with seeing the truths, it has not yet directly realized them; compared with worldly wholesome roots, its opening of the gate of the noble path gives it an irreplaceable primacy. The two explanations of partial superiority and comprehensive superiority therefore each have their range. The former preserves levels of comparison; the latter points to the function of opening the gate. Once judgments of higher and lower wisdom are detached from what they address and what they do, they become empty praise.

4. Illumination Is Not a Single Beam Moving in One Direction

Question: It is easy to understand wisdom illuminating an object. How can the object also be said to illuminate wisdom?

Answer: If wisdom is imagined as a lamp in one’s hand and the object as a thing outside the lamp, illumination seems able to move only from here to there. But the treatise first dismantles this fixed model. To say simply that wisdom produces the object, the object produces wisdom, both together produce them, or they arise without a cause would turn the name “causes and conditions” into self-nature. When established according to causes and conditions, object and wisdom are only provisional names. From the inconceivable perspective, there is no obstruction to their mutually illuminating one another.

Two mirrors facing one another provide the first image. The image in one mirror appears by means of the other, while the other mirror also appears within this one. Neither can be designated permanently as only illuminator or only illuminated. The earth producing a sprout, and the sprout in turn producing earth, is the second image: earth producing the sprout symbolizes the object producing wisdom, and the sprout producing earth in return symbolizes wisdom illuminating the object. The object gives wisdom content, while wisdom allows the object to become manifest. This is mutual illumination.

The twenty wisdoms illuminate the ten suchnesses, twelve links of dependent origination, Four Truths, Two Truths, Three Truths, one reality, and no-truth. This looks like an immense table of correlations, but it repeatedly verifies only one point: the name of a wisdom cannot be judged apart from what it illuminates. Even when two wisdoms or three wisdoms bear the same names, their depth differs according to whether the emptiness and existence illuminated differ, whether they contain or reveal the Middle, and whether one’s own practice and transforming others relate differently. The same twelve links become four different wisdoms when one analyzes their phenomena, embodies their emptiness, distinguishes their immeasurable differences, or sees the three virtues precisely in them.

Illumination is therefore not a use added after wisdom has already been formed; it is an internal condition of this wisdom’s being the wisdom it is. If one does not ask what is illuminated and how, memorizing ever more names and numbers only carries one farther from the subtlety of wisdom.

5. Coarse and Wondrous Are Not Permanent Identities

Question: Once the earlier wisdoms have been judged coarse and the later wisdoms wondrous, do the coarse wisdoms thereafter have no value?

Answer: If coarse and wondrous were eternally unchanging identities of the wisdoms, the later text could not speak of opening. The treatise judges first to reveal differences before interfusion, and then opens to reveal that difference need not become separation.

Judgment proceeds along three roads. First, it judges by the twenty wisdoms: whether permanence can be heard, trusted, and cultivated, and whether what is realized possesses all Dharmas, establish the boundary between earlier and later. Second, it judges through four alternatives of knowledge and seeing: someone has neither heard nor realized; someone has heard but not realized; someone has not heard yet sees because of former habituation; someone hears and enters realization. Knowledge is not seeing, and seeing need not come from hearing in this life. Confusing conceptual understanding with direct realization, or confusing an accidental seeing with complete hearing and reflection, disorders the stages. Third, it judges through the five eyes: imagining with closed eyes and seeing directly with open eyes differ, and seeing beyond obstructions, seeing the truths, knowing faculties, and seeing the true mark each have their own depth.

The simile of curing the film over the eyes makes the issue direct. A person with closed eyes can hear another describe forms and produce innumerable imaginings, yet these are ultimately not genuine seeing. The crucial task is not to refine the contest among imaginings but to cure the film and open the eye. The divine eye’s relation to what lies within and beyond obstruction, the wisdom eye’s dead road and sudden opening, and the Dharma eye’s knowledge of medicines and illnesses and its errors about faculties all show that wisdom concerns not only whether content is correct but whether the capacity of seeing has actually opened.

Judgment is not, however, the last word. The first sixteen wisdoms are coarse only so long as they remain unresolved; once resolved, they can enter the latter four wisdoms. Worldly wisdom too can enter right characteristics from wrong characteristics. The skillful wisdoms beginning with the five calming contemplations through the Buddha wisdom of the Shared Teaching can also enter through opening the provisional to reveal the real, and the successive wisdom of the Distinct Teaching can enter the wondrous. This does not say that differences of depth never existed. It says that earlier skillful means need not remain forever sealed within skillful means.

6. Opening Does Not Replace the Old Eye but Makes It Interfuse

Question: Does opening the coarse to reveal the wondrous mean discarding coarse wisdom first and then replacing it with an entirely new wondrous wisdom?

Answer: The treatise twice rejects this understanding. When wisdom is opened, the first sixteen wisdoms are not deleted but resolved one by one and transformed into wondrous wisdom according both to what each is in itself and the stage it enters. When eyes are opened, the flesh eye, divine eye, wisdom eye, and Dharma eye are likewise not gouged out; they interfuse with the Buddha eye. If the old were merely abandoned, there would still be one coarse thing relinquished and another wondrous thing newly acquired, and there could not be said to be no coarse with which the wondrous stands in relation.

One studying the Great Vehicle still sees with the eye born of father and mother, yet it can be called the Buddha eye. The divine eye no longer sees buddha lands through dual marks. The wisdom eye attains foremost purity. The Dharma eye’s knowledge of faculties reaches completion at its limit. The functions of the four eyes are not flattened, yet they are no longer separated from the Buddha eye. “Quiescent yet constantly illuminating” means precisely that quiescence does not obstruct illumination and illumination does not obstruct quiescence. If only quiescence remained, knowledge and vision could not be opened; if there were only illumination, it would still be pursuit directed outward.

The simile of the kalaviṅka still within the graph 㲉 tr. “shell” especially prevents subtlety from being reserved for the endpoint alone. Before the bird has emerged from its shell, its voice already surpasses all other birds. Before the Buddha eye has opened ultimately, perfect study and perfect faith already possess the subtlety of resemblance. Nominal, resemblance, partial realization, and ultimate each retain their station, yet all are threaded by the perfect intent. If the ultimate flattens the preceding stages, practice loses the reality of growth; if resemblance is passed off as ultimate, the stages are likewise lost.

7. How One Object Opens into Four Contemplations

Question: The twelve links of dependent origination are one object. Why do lower, middle, upper, and highest wisdom disclose four kinds of object?

Answer: The object is not arbitrarily reshaped. Modes of understanding allow it to display different depths. Lower wisdom sees cause and result across the three times revolving like a wheel. It traces the sequence from ignorance and formations through consciousness, name-and-form, and the rest, and sees craving, grasping, and existence in turn bringing forth future birth and death. Seeing deluded confusion as impermanent, suffering, empty, and without self, it severs bondage of cause and bondage of result; just as no smoke appears when fire is not lit, it seeks cessation by analyzing phenomena.

Middle wisdom returns to the single thought of delusion and can find no entity of ignorance within, without, or between. Ignorance is only a provisional name born from the conjunction of causes and conditions and arises like an illusion. Formations, consciousness, and name-and-form through craving, grasping, and existence are all likewise illusory. Since no new Dharma is created and no old Dharma is destroyed, the two bondages of cause and result are released from the point of neither arising nor ceasing. This does not deny the phenomena of cause and result; it ceases to grasp illusory transition as self-nature.

Upper wisdom sees not only one course of cessation but the immeasurable differences among affliction, karma, and suffering: a particular affliction produces a particular karma, a particular karma brings a particular suffering, and none are confused. A particular obstruction is broken and a particular virtue revealed, while skillful means are as immeasurable as illnesses. Having understood for oneself, one can know the various Dharma gates suited to sentient beings and benefit others. Wisdom here turns from delivering oneself to knowing illness and medicine.

Highest wisdom asks further: if the three paths are in their very identity the three virtues, can one first destroy the three paths and then seek the three virtues somewhere else? Affliction and prajñā, karma and liberation, suffering and Dharma body are no longer placed on opposite shores. Jīvaka transforming poison into medicine does not abandon poison and obtain some separate medicine. A person with superknowledge need not avoid here and go there. Space has neither gain and loss nor joy and grief. These three similes do not teach indulgence in affliction, karma, and suffering. They break the substantialist imagination that “this Dharma must first be destroyed before some other Dharma can be obtained.”

The four contemplations therefore each have a path of liberation: first, severing causes and results that arise and cease; second, seeing illusion and neither arising nor ceasing; third, pervasively knowing immeasurable differences, breaking obstructions, and revealing virtues; fourth, fully possessing the three virtues precisely as the three paths. If the object does not turn, wisdom remains coarse. If the object turns into a wondrous object, the wisdom illuminating it turns accordingly. This is what it means for one object to open into four and reveals that wisdom and object cannot be divided.

8. Why Each of the Seven Sets of Two Wisdoms Again Has Three Kinds

Question: Provisional wisdom and real wisdom already form a pair. Why must there be seven sets, with each divided again into transforming others, one’s own practice together with transforming others, and one’s own practice?

Answer: If provisional and real are merely a fixed pair of terms, people will quickly use them to crown their own affective views. The treatise examines them level by level through seven sets. Does one analyze form and thereby reach emptiness, or embody form as immediately empty? Does emptiness merely contain the Middle, or clearly reveal it? Are Middle principle, emptiness, and provisionality sequential? Do all Dharmas simultaneously converge upon form, emptiness, and nonemptiness? Viewed from each later set, what called itself real in the preceding set can again be judged provisional.

The threefold division distinguishes teaching from realization. In transforming others, provisional and real are taught according to faculties; immeasurable differences all follow sentient beings’ dispositions and together belong to the provisionality of transforming others. When inner realization and outward teaching are compared, one’s own realization is comprehensively real and outward teaching comprehensively provisional. Returning to realization itself, provisional and real can still be distinguished. Thus “what I teach is real” cannot establish itself by the sentence alone. One must ask to whom it is taught, according to what principle, and what the teacher has personally realized.

Teaching that follows sentient beings’ dispositions is immeasurable because a single person who has not attained the path can already produce limitless views and attachments horizontally, to say nothing of many different people. What is seen in one’s own practice is not manifold because the principle seen does not fracture according to affective attachments. This does not abolish the diversity of transforming others; it ensures that diversity always has somewhere to return. If teaching has only one form, it cannot respond to faculties. If responding to faculties loses its point of return, it becomes no more than accommodation of affective views.

The seven sets do not exist so a later set can mock an earlier one. On one side there is breaking: an understanding through arising and ceasing cannot impersonate non-arising and non-ceasing, nor can a sequential Middle call itself perfectly interfused. On the other side there is establishment: each provisional teaching, at its appropriate place, treats affective attachments and leads people into the path. Genuine depth and breadth know which delusions have been broken and which principles revealed, while also knowing which skillful means have been established. Breaking without establishment cannot transform others; establishment without breaking easily solidifies skillful means into the ultimate.

Final opening and revealing resembles a king passing a lowly dwelling and streams entering the sea. The lowly dwelling is not exchanged for a palace, yet becomes dignified through the king’s arrival. The streams enter from different routes, lose their former names in the sea, and all take on the sea’s flavor. Every provisional truth interfuses into the wondrous truth, and no wisdom arisen in reliance upon those truths is left outside the gate.

9. Three Wisdoms Entering One Another: Three Names, Attainment in One Mind

Question: Omniscience, wisdom of the varieties of the path, and the knowledge of all modes have three names. Why does the treatise also say that one wisdom is the three wisdoms and the three wisdoms are one wisdom?

Answer: The treatise first preserves five differences precisely so that “one mind” does not become confusion. In the first, Middle wisdom enters empty wisdom through deeply contemplating emptiness and then emptying this preceding emptiness. In the second, tathāgatagarbha wisdom enters empty wisdom through deeply contemplating emptiness, seeing nonemptiness, and seeing that this nonemptiness possesses all Dharmas. In the third, Middle wisdom and the other two wisdoms each separately face one another; each conditions one object and arises in sequence. In the fourth, tathāgatagarbha wisdom enters Middle wisdom so that when the later wisdom arises it possesses all Dharmas. Only the fifth speaks of the perfectly interfused three wisdoms.

Perfect interfusion therefore does not proclaim no difference before distinctions have been made. Only after each mode of mutual entry is discerned does it clarify that the contaminated, uncontaminated, and neither contaminated nor uncontaminated are each immediately empty, immediately provisional, and immediately the Middle. One Dharma is the three Dharmas, and the three Dharmas are one Dharma. One wisdom is the three wisdoms, and the three wisdoms are one wisdom. Object and wisdom likewise interfuse without obstruction. The three names are provisionally established to make understanding easier; what is attained is not divided into before and after.

Wisdom must also be accomplished through contemplation. In general explanation, contemplation and wisdom both extend through cause and result. When distinguished, contemplation is cause and wisdom result. Contemplation entering emptiness from the provisional accomplishes omniscience; contemplation entering the provisional from emptiness accomplishes wisdom of the varieties of the path; contemplation of the Middle Way accomplishes the knowledge of all modes. If only the names of wisdom are discussed without contemplative practice, the names of results hang in empty space. If one only contemplates without knowing which wisdom is accomplished, it becomes difficult to distinguish whether the path has interfused.

Whether each of the five kinds of three wisdoms is coarse or wondrous is likewise judged by whether both cause and result interfuse. In some, result and principle interfuse while the causal gate remains separate. Some do not enter through the Shared gate, yet their three wisdoms remain distinct. In others the result interfuses while the cause remains sequential. Only when cause is perfect, result perfect, and truth and wisdom both wondrous does no trace of preceding skillful means remain. Yet in opening and revealing, even worldly wisdom can enter the right, and still less are the world-transcending wisdoms of the Three Vehicles abandoned. Relational judgment discloses the single perfect wisdom; the absolute then opens all scriptures so none is other than the true mark.

10. Successive Mutual Illumination: The Table Ends in Interfusion

Question: At the end, wisdom concerning the twelve links illuminates the ten suchnesses, wisdom concerning the Four Truths illuminates the twelve links, and the two and three wisdoms then illuminate all the objects in turn. Amid such complexity, what is the core?

Answer: The core is not the addition of more names but the breaking of the rigidity by which one wisdom can guard only one object. The four lower, middle, upper, and highest wisdoms can in turn illuminate the ten suchnesses of the six paths, the Two Vehicles, bodhisattvas, and the Buddha realm. Wisdoms of suffering and origination, path and cessation can illuminate different Dharma realms according to arising-and-ceasing, non-arising, immeasurable, and unconstructed Four Truths. The seven kinds of two wisdoms can illuminate the ten realms, twelve links, and Four Truths. The five kinds of three wisdoms can in turn illuminate the ten realms, twelve links, Four Truths, and Two Truths. One wisdom of suchness comprehensively illuminates the Buddha realm’s ten suchnesses, inconceivable dependent origination, the unconstructed Four Truths, true truth, and the ultimate meaning of the Middle Way.

These successive illuminations show that the gates of objects previously separated can enter one another; once objects enter one another, the wisdoms that illuminate them must also enter one another. If a single cell of a table is grasped as the whole of wisdom, an expedient distinction has become a new obstruction. The treatise concludes by making the wisdoms successively illuminate the truths and by saying that because the truths interfuse, wisdom interfuses, thus revealing that all wisdoms and objects must ultimately enter one another.

At the end, it says that because truths interfuse, wisdom interfuses, and that only when wisdom and truth interfuse is wisdom called wondrous. Yet “wondrous” and “not wondrous” remain expedient distinctions made before principle is seen. On genuinely seeing principle, provisional and real are no longer established as two things, and subtlety is not placed outside what is not wondrous. This does not erase everything that came before. It allows every preceding distinction to complete its guiding function.

The chapter begins with shadow and echo and ends with successive mutual illumination. Its beginning says that when the object interfuses, wisdom accords; its end says that when truths interfuse, wisdom interfuses. Beginning and end speak of one matter: if illuminating wisdom still stands outside what it illuminates, it cannot exhaust the object; if the illuminated object cannot become manifest within wisdom, it is not a principle that can be entered. Wondrous wisdom is not a name higher than every wisdom. It distinguishes every difference clearly and enables every difference to interfuse in opening and revealing.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

The mirror says: Zhanran’s later explanation first separates the rationale for the chapter from its direct explanation, then divides the direct explanation into the two great gates of general discussion and relation to objects. The general discussion has its own six sections of number, class, characteristic, illumination, judgment, and opening. The relation to objects does not repeat illumination; it lets practitioners truly know upon which object mind should arise. If one sees only the twenty names and numbers but not the movement from general illumination into each concrete characteristic, one has not yet entered the chapter’s point of application.

Its first essential eye lies in the internal grouping of the twenty wisdoms. The later explanation assigns the first six to the Tripiṭaka Teaching, the next four to the Shared Teaching, the next three to the Distinct Teaching, the following three to the three kinds of buddha station, and the last four to the Perfect Teaching. This grouping does not rearrange the sequence of the base text but reveals the teaching structure beneath the twenty names. It also explains why the treatment of characteristics varies in length: each class has multiple characteristics, and those characteristics again admit longer and shorter treatment. The extensive treatment of the four wholesome roots does not mean other wisdoms have been omitted.

Its second essential eye is that illumination, judgment, and opening each possess internal divisions. Illumination first states its intent, then resolves whether object and wisdom can mutually illuminate, and finally lists the twenty wisdoms illuminating the various objects. Judgment first proceeds according to earlier and later wisdoms, next by the four alternatives of knowledge and seeing, and last by the five eyes. Opening first opens wisdom and then opens the eyes. Thus judging something coarse is not the conclusion; opening and revealing is the chapter’s destination. If one stops with the first twelve coarse and latter eight wondrous wisdoms, a relational judgment has been mistaken for a permanent identity.

Its third essential eye is the difference between general illumination and relation to objects. The later explanation asks: if wisdom is not correlated with objects one by one, upon what can later practitioners rest wondrous contemplation? The Shiqian clearly judges that the earlier passage says only in general that a particular wisdom illuminates a particular object, and that practitioners cannot yet set their minds to it〔T1717 0866a03〕. Only the later passage unfolds one by one the characteristics of lower, middle, upper, and highest contemplation of the twelve links, the seven sets of the Two Truths, and the five kinds of the three wisdoms. Its intricacy is therefore not redundancy but the conversion of teaching classifications into objects that can be contemplated.

Its fourth essential eye lies at the watershed between the relational and the absolute. If the object does not turn, coarse and wondrous wisdoms appear in relation; this is relational. Only when the coarse object itself turns into the wondrous and coarse wisdom itself immediately becomes wondrous is there the absolute. The later explanation therefore does not understand opening as deletion of preceding Dharmas. The four eyes entering the Buddha eye, streams entering the sea, and a lowly dwelling receiving a king all say that the functions of preceding Dharmas are perfectly accomplished through opening and revealing, not abandoned as refuse where they stood.

Its fifth essential eye is the method by which the seven sets of two wisdoms are established. The later explanation emphasizes that the tradition’s chapters and commentaries accord with principle and rely upon teaching, and that the Buddha’s scriptures are used to clarify the meaning of the Lotus, breaking pervasively and establishing pervasively. The seven sets and twenty-one kinds of provisional and real wisdom are chapter divisions inferred from principles disclosed in the scriptures. The text neither claims that every name already occurs as an identical sentence in some treatise nor permits a person to canonize his own language as wondrous and real. Which delusions can be broken, which principles seen, and which skillful means established are the three joints by which provisional and real are tested.

Its sixth essential eye is that the wisdom of one reality still has explanation, judgment, and opening. First, the various wisdoms enter wisdom of suchness and lose their former names. Next, coarse and wondrous are judged according to what stands in relation. Finally, the preceding ten wisdoms are opened so all become wondrous wisdom. If one speaks only of inclusion in the one without seeing opening, the “one” is easily read as an exclusive unit. If one says only that everything is wondrous without passing through judgment, affective views can directly impersonate wondrous wisdom.

Its seventh essential eye is the final successive opening and combining of the six wisdoms following the six objects. The later explanation discloses its perfect intent through “one object is all objects; one wisdom is all wisdoms”: because the gates of objects enter one another, the gates of wisdom must likewise enter one another. Truths interfuse and wisdom interfuses, perfectly completing this chapter’s purport of opening and revealing. The table’s complexity exists only to disclose beginning and end; it does not let branches overwhelm the governing aim. If the axis inherited from the subtlety of objects and returning to opening and revealing is not seen, necessary sequence will be mistaken for clutter.

One further place shows the later explanation preserving the text and making a judgment at once. Both the present treatise and the treatise text upon which it relies record thirty-two minds in lower forbearance, and the later explanation expressly judges this text’s 三十二, “thirty-two,” correct and another recension’s 四十二, “forty-two,” erroneous. The three levels of evidence agree here, but this conclusion still cannot be used to conflate the graph variant between 苦, “suffering,” and 忍, “forbearance,” in the following line. The original explanation, the wording of the received witness, and the later commentary’s judgment each remain in their place. This resembles judgment and opening throughout the chapter: only after differences are made clear can their integration be discussed. Seeking agreement before distinguishing levels produces only conflation, not perfect interfusion.

Finally, the later explanation extends this pattern of opening and combining object and wisdom into the subtleties that follow and says that even realization in the Origin Gate does not go beyond this principle. It does not add another supreme teaching to the base text but points out the shared grammar already established here: first distinguish differences so contemplation has a support; next judge coarse and wondrous so the route of advance is not confused; then open skillful means so no difference departs from wondrous object and wondrous wisdom. The eye for reading the subtlety of wisdom lies precisely in neither leaping over differences nor being trapped by them.